


Acorn Before Oak

by forgetthesun



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5865166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetthesun/pseuds/forgetthesun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night a strange boy stumbles across Emma Swan in the mysterious Darkwood and she agrees to take him home. ‘Home’ turns out to be the fairy domain, full of twisted creatures mostly forgotten in her world and god-figures who live life by a different set of rules. She trusts in her sword and her abilities but there is magic in this place, more than she has ever seen before.</p>
<p>Between ritual sacrifices, kidnapped children and scathing fairy Queens; will Emma be able to complete the delivery job which brought her here and return to her world? Or will she be forever lost between the pages of stories only just now being written...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acorn Before Oak

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Acorn Before Oak: Manips](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5862697) by [Dragoon23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoon23/pseuds/Dragoon23). 



> Many thanks to SQDrabbles, EmmaShalForever(thokin), ME, Bear and Soph for being such patient and amazing cheerleaders. You kept me rolling when this all wanted to come to a stop. And Dragoon23 for this ridiculously incredible artwork which I could not have imagined turning out better. Thank you all.

\--

 

_Acorn before oak I knew,_

_An egg before a hen,_

_But I never heard of an eggshell brew_

_A dinner for harvest men._

~ Joseph Jacobs, Brewery of Eggshells (a changeling tale)

 

_\--_

__

_\--_

_The woman appeared before the child from within an ominous cloud of purple smoke. There was a moment where time stood still, when the girl recognised her peril and stumbled backwards in the fruitless hope for escape. But this confrontation had been months in the making and with a deep inhale through flared nostrils, words of fury tumbled free from the woman’s lips._

_“You have killed him.” The girl gasped in horror. She had not known the full consequence of her actions until now. “I had songbirds whisper his praises through the air,” she hissed through crimson lips, her dark tresses whipping around her face. “Then buried them beneath the earth lest my mother hear and it was all for naught.” She stalked forward, following each backwards step the girl took._

_“Because you, Snow White,” the young girl quivered as the woman towered over her. “You looked upon our love with joyous wonder and swore to keep your silence. And you_ lied _.”_

_The woman’s chin dropped to her chest in sorrow as she remembered that fateful day, which already felt like it had been a lifetime ago. Still felt like it was just the day before that all of her dreams had been cut down as swift as summer wheat. Cut back to dry husks and dead winter, that was what she felt like now without him. His kind eyes and loving arms were cold and dead in the ground because of one stupid human girl._

_“I was foolish to trust that your innocence would keep us safe,” she sneered. “But that you would spill our secret like so much poison directly into her ear...” Her eyes were wild. “She always wanted me to follow in her footsteps and look at me now,” magic crackled around the tips of her fingers and the roots of the trees around them twitched as if answering her call. “I have become the Harvest Queen, yet all I reap is death.”_

_“I didn’t mean to tell,” Snow sobbed, tears wetting her soft white cheeks._

_She hadn’t believed the old tales told of the Darkwood. Had thought the fairy folk were too beautiful to be capable of evil when they rode by beneath the waning moon. She was a child entranced by their magic - their myths - and she had just wanted to see them up close. So one night she crossed the circle of toadstool cups and found a whole new world._

_“You were both so kind to me -” she remembered his smile, his teasing jokes. The powerful horse he so easily leapt upon and rode as if he had never known anything else. “The woman only asked me if I knew you…” Snow had met her beyond the fairy ring another night, much later in the year. “I didn’t know she was your mother... I never meant –”_

_“But you did.” An icy finality settled into the woman’s stomach, into the womb that would forever lie barren in her love’s absence. “You have made an enemy of a Fairy Queen, little girl.” The air began to grow thick with magic as dark eyes blazed intently with sudden madness. “And this betrayal will have as high a cost as any you might imagine.”_

_Her words took on a thunderous quality as the unnatural purple glow of her magic began to curl towards the child. “You took my hope for the future, so I will take yours.” She clenched her fists and her eyes narrowed. “Your first-born shall be your payment to me.” Her harsh voice gave life to the curse. “And as your lifetimes are as short as a breath to me, I also lay claim to any of their children, as they follow in turn. Until the line comes to an end.”_

_The smoky light of the woman’s magic sunk beneath the girl’s skin and she fell to the ground with a choked off cry, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the curse. Once spoken, it could not be revoked._

_“With your loose lips you have damned your family to suffer this burden.” The woman stood over her and even through her own fear, the girl could see the anguish of heartbreak in her eyes. “May those of your blood never forget the importance of keeping true to their promises.” With one more spiteful glance, she disappeared in a whirl of smoke._

_The girl lay on the ground, shuddering at the sensation as magic found a home in her body. She could feel it changing her, shifting and settling into her insides like a malady._

_She wished now that she had listened to the warnings inherent in the tales of the Darkwood. Her people had been right to teach her to fear the fairy creatures._

_\--_

Emma Swan rubbed her temples and stifled a groan. Had she really walked out on the offer of good, Crown-funded tracking work, to sit alone in this nightmarish ancient forest on the longest night of the year? More importantly, had she actually managed to fail the simple delivery job which had brought her here? Beneath the heavy hood of a woolen cloak, her blue-green eyes glared out at the moonlit trees as if daring them to comment.

“Yeah,” she answered herself with a sigh, breath misting in the cold. “I guess I have.”

Her chin fell to rest heavily on her palm, her elbow propped on a bent knee where she sat cross-legged on the forest floor. In almost seven years working as a finder and tracker in Mist Haven and its surrounding Kingdoms, she had never turned down a good job. But one mad-eyed man with a hat found her in a bar and she dropped everything for the chance to answer an erstwhile question. If she ever returned, her reputation was not going to survive this.

In her defense, how many times in your life do you meet someone with enough magic they’re capable of disappearing in the blink of an eye? _Well,_ she rolled her eyes at the memory which no longer stung as it once had. _Twice in my case._ She glanced down at the thin strip of leather wrapped in crisscrosses around her left wrist, unmarred as the day she tied it, ten long years ago.

The first man who disappeared in such a way, had abandoned her with a sentence to serve in the dungeons and a babe growing in her belly. But then, the child had disappeared too, so maybe this was a theme in her life.

Emma pulled out the piece of well-worn parchment which had led her here and unfolded it carefully. The message at the top of it was simple and would mean nothing to anyone but her: _the apple came from the Darkwood._ Beneath it were the details of the job and her payment - which was not to be gold, but an answer.

Two months ago, the strange man had found her, caught her, as she stumbled her way out of a tavern and towards her lodgings. 

\--

_“They said your name was Swan.” He had to lift his chin high to see out from under the brim of his bizarre hat. Emma tried to copy his pose and almost lost her footing on the cobbles. “Hey, steady,” he admonished slyly._

_She stepped back and glared at him, her hand reaching for the blade normally strapped to her belt, momentarily forgetting she had left it at home - she had learnt from experience that bar fights were more likely to escape the notice of guards if no one died in the mayhem. At Emma’s grimace, his grin came sudden and wild and full of teeth._

_“Guess you are her.” His eyes flashed something uncanny as he presented her with the finger-sized roll of parchment, held tight within a patterned ring of wood. Against her better judgement - and possibly only because she was reduced to simple thought processes thanks to the ale - she accepted the offering._

_The man jumped back a step as soon as his delivery was in her hand. He tipped his hat and bowed with a great flourish then, much to her astonishment, threw the hat down an alley. Where it began to spin…_  

_\--_

Magic in their world was not something you advertised. Not since the Emerald Guard had begun to roam the Kingdoms, capturing or killing as many with power as they could and making everyone else fear drawing their eye.

In smaller towns, it was still common to hear tales of shape-shifting fairies living in the woods or brownies and hobgoblins hiding in your rafters but in the cities, even herb-mistresses now found it difficult to sell their wares. Long gone were the days when convoys of Fair Folk would ride the lonely paths at night, or take a sickly child to live forever within their fairy rings. Days when blessed couples might find a love so true that it’s kiss could break any spell. Even their stories were beginning to fade.

Emma though, had had more encounters with magic than the average person. She put it down to the fact she ran in odd circles. Street folk and thieves were willing to overlook anything which might give them an advantage. Given how she had grown up, she’d learnt to take help where she could get it and not ask too many questions. It was easier to survive that way.

The most unforgettable of her experiences with magic had involved a pair of fairies. And in their footsteps they had left a peculiar apple. Red as poison and with an unnatural sheen to its skin, it was larger and more perfect than any apple she had ever laid eyes on. Just like the leather thong it had been left with, the apple had refused to wither. The mystery of their origins had plagued her for the past ten years.

That mystery had brought her here. To the Darkwood, on Winter Solstice, seeking the apple tree which would lead her to those answers.

Only the Darkwood didn’t seem to want to let her in. All day she had been here and each time she tried to walk further than the first few rows of trees, she found herself unable to continue or turned back around by some unseen force. The place was drenched with an old magic that kept her hair on end. One that had frightened the nearby villagers enough to steer clear of the woods for generations.

They believed this was the home of the fairy folk. Emma did not know what to believe but the scars on the back of her hands refused to stop their itching and they always knew when magic was afoot.

The woods were far enough from her home lands that she had never heard of them. And as an owl screeched high above, Emma began to wish she never had. She glanced up at the enormous full moon, uncovered by cloud on this icy night. Maybe she should let this be the first job she’d failed since she was a child. Go back to the nearest village and find a fire to sit by. Or some ale to drink.

Her gaze dropped at the sound of crinkling leaves and she shoved the parchment back into her pocket. She was on her feet in the blink of an eye, her hand curled around an already half-drawn sword.  

A moment later she found the source of the noise. A golden ball of thread was rolling its way purposefully out from between the trees. She raised an eyebrow as it turned and twisted its way between gnarled roots, never slowing and leaving a trail of unwound string behind it to mark the path it had travelled.

The ball came to a pointed stop just in front of her feet. With a weary sigh, she sheathed her sword and leant forward to pick it up, always too curious for her own good.

“Hey!” A high pitched voice cried indignantly from deeper in the woods where the thread had originated. “That’s mine.”

Emma’s eyes flickered towards the voice but stopped short when they caught sight of the golden string lining the ground. It was growing shorter and shorter, as if the ball was rewinding itself now that it had reached its destination. She blinked up at the young boy as he crashed his way from between the trees.

He had cropped dark hair, clothes too richly decorated for a villager and much too light a weight to be suitable in the frozen night air. Between his garments and the healthy glow of his skin, he looked like a princeling.

The moment the thread was fully coiled, she gave a start and her hood fell back to reveal golden blonde hair held behind her head in a loose horse-tail. Her eyes snapped back to her hands in shock. The ball which had just been so coarse and springy between her fingers had now hardened into a globe of solid wood. As if it had always been that way.

“Huh,” she turned it in her hand and felt the grooves of the design carved into it. From a distance the ball would look like real wool, complete with the twisted pile of spun thread. “That’s a neat trick.”

The boy puffed slightly, one hand on his side as he caught his breath but his eyes were fixed on her.

On closer inspection, his clothes were more odd than she had initially thought. Emma wondered now if they were in fact too fine to have been made by human hands. The wafting grey shirt hidden beneath a twilight-blue tunic, could have been woven from cobweb and both it and the tunic were threaded through with a shimmering copper pattern of oak leaves. They topped water-spray white breeches and midnight velvet boots fit for a king. None of the clothes wore any sign of tearing or discolouration after his stumble through the woods.

His eyes narrowed as he finished his own appraisal of her simple but sturdy boots, breeches, jerkin and cloak, in all their varying forest shades. His eyes lingered on the short sword strapped to her waist, eyeing what he could see of the sturdy crossguard, wrapped grip and gibbous pomel. They seemed to also take keen note of the mismatched scars on the back of her hands. Then his mouth stretched wide into a hopeful smile and she felt a new shiver run down her spine.

“Did it work?” He took a step towards her and she dropped the ball in order to take up her sword again, although she was hesitant to draw it against the child. "Are you the one who’ll take me away and save me from my mother?"

"I -"  the word twisted into an odd noise and she struggled to clear her throat, almost dropping her sword in surprise. Her face scrunched in confusion. " _What_?"

"The old man who gave me that,” he nodded at the ball and Emma followed his gaze. “He said that if I followed it I would find what I was looking for.” She looked up at him from under her brow, the words almost too similar to the message which brought her here. “The woman who raised me lied about being my mother, so I’m going on an adventure to find my real one.” He directed all that look of hopefulness back at her and she froze. “Is it you?"

Blindsided by the questions, Emma picked up the ball again, forestalling her answer. This was some sort of cruel joke, to find a boy now, asking if she were his mother. _Did I accidentally steal something from a trickster fairy who wants to get even?_ She let out a heavy breath through her nose and turned the ball this way and that, looking closely at the repeated burrs left behind by a nicked chisel. Holding it up against the wooden ring on her finger, she found the same pattern. The message which had brought her here had been rolled inside of it.

“I had a son once,” she grunted, threw the ball back at him a little too hard in an attempt to cover the emotion in her voice. Not at all sure why she was telling him anything. “He died.”

The fate of the babies stolen by fairy folk was well known. If they were lucky they might live for a time among those folk, stuck in a stasis where they did not age until the fairies grew bored with them. She had never believed in luck and had long since made her peace with the fact of her child’s fate. In recent years though, she had begun to feel a driving curiosity about the fairies who took him - her last question could be answered only by them.

The boy shook his hand a little after catching the ball. He tilted his head at her, clearly not yet put off by her grouchy demeanour and already wanting to ask another question despite her reluctance.

“No one enters these woods, they’re all afraid. Why are you here, if it’s not to help me?”

This one was easy. And if her hunch was right, this kid might be her key to getting inside the Darkwood. The key to finding her answers.

“I’ve got a job to do - a man also gave me something,” she replied carefully, trying to find a balance between getting help from the boy and sharing too much of her story. “I’m supposed to deliver it in there,” she nodded at the trees behind him, where the light of the moon failed to reach. “But it doesn’t matter,” she laid the bait with only a hint of guilt. “I can’t seem to find my way inside.”

The boy narrowed his eyes, looking at her thoughtfully and opening and closing his mouth twice. He didn’t speak until straightening his back and resettling his tunic, as if about to give an official missive to some distant court. Emma had to struggle to hide her smile at his antics.

“Will you take me to my mother?” He asked in an attempt at an imperious tone. “I’ve been gone from our village too long and there are strange things in the wood on the night of a Solstice.”

“The mother you were looking for on your adventure,” she asked carefully, tossing her head carelessly so that her hair swung back and forth. “Or the one you were running from?” He shrugged evasively and she rolled her eyes. “Is she back where you came from?” She gestured to the woods which had so far refused her entry. He nodded.

“I can help you find your way through the magic that protects the woods.”

Although the boy had taken her bait, Emma hesitated. There was something exceedingly eerie about this place and it had everything to do with the magic she could feel within it. Her eyes lifted to the trees once more while her hand habitually tugged at the leather around her wrist.

“Are there any apple trees, where you come from?” Her eyes found his easily under the bright moon.

“There’s one, yes.”

She gritted her jaw. This would likely be her only shot at finding the answers she sought.

“Then it’s settled, I’ll take you to your mother.”

“I’m Henry.” He grinned, thrusting out a hand at her. She laughed, caught off guard after the serious tone of their conversation. His hand was small in hers but his grip was tight.

“Emma.”

\--

_She hadn’t eaten in three days and the piece of sickly rotten fruit which was her meal had left Emma feeling more unwell than her previously empty stomach._

_She had stolen it out of the back of a stall and been chased by market guards for six streets before making her escape into the Sump. The Sump was her home, the first she had chosen. Filled with convicts, cutthroats and the leftovers of the city, it was a mess of mud and stink. An unlikely home for a twelve year old to choose. But she had managed to find a mostly dry corner to sleep in for the past two weeks and after being at sea for a year, that meant an awful lot._

_Today she had her sights set on a bigger catch than rotten fruit. There was a young Noble, a man who spat at beggars and kicked the mangy pups that ran the streets. And his purse was always full._

_Not long after her arrival in Mist Haven she had heard of the Hooded Rogue, the knavish leader of the city underbelly. It was said he looked after his thieves and despite a lifetime of learning not to trust anyone but herself, after a couple of weeks living in the city, Emma knew she needed help to find her feet. If she could steal the purse and present it to him (after taking a coin or two for herself) she hoped he would allow her into his court._

_She had been following the Noble since he entered the Temple District, stopping to light candles at a shine to the feisty sun God, Rumplestiltskin, to pray for the loan of his unyielding light to aid him in his affairs. Emma had never seen proof that the Gods listened to any of their followers. From there he headed across the city to Markettown, where he met another man of similar standing._ Although, _she thought as she watched the other man drop some coins into a rattling cup,_ maybe this one can keep his purse today.

_Emma was not new to thievery. When she got too old for the Crown to pay for her bed at the orphanage, they had sold her. She escaped the slave master and survived the next month on stolen food. She had stolen a worn belt knife from one of the pirates she had sailed with too and it was that blade which she clutched tightly in her palm now. Waiting for her moment._

_It came almost too soon, as a brawl broke out at a stall down the row, a stallholder shouting something about being underpaid. The Nobles stepped into the crowd which had formed almost instantly at the taste of conflict, their hands going to the hilts of their swords. The crowd pressed in before Emma could follow but she would not let this mark escape. She dropped to her knees and ducked beneath the skirts of a lady, ignoring the cries of indignation as she tried to free herself from the yards of fabric. She scrambled forwards, crawling between the bowed legs of an unsuspecting man before she was on her feet again, knife clasped carefully in her hand._

_The Nobles were trying to break up the fight, which had now turned violent and were facing away from her. Her heart sung. This was her chance._

_She dove forward, the blade between her nimble fingers easily slicing through the rawhide purse-strings. Her other hand caught it at is fell and the hefty weight of more coins than she had ever known filled her growling belly as well as any food._

_Then she ran._

_Emma was good at running._

_Her bare feet found easy purchase on the ground and she was off, bounding between the gathered cityfolk, too quick for any of them to catch. She had done it. She had silver in her hand, maybe even gold. She would present it to Hood and request work. This was it, her first chance at life on her own terms._

_An arm around her waist pulled her up short and it took that moment of inertia for a great dread to settle into the pit of her stomach. The arm wore the grey tunic and mail of King George’s Guard. And all of her hopes came crashing down in an instant._

_She was struck across the face, the purse and knife yanked from between her fingers._

_They took her to the dungeons. At least it was a step up from the slavers._

_It didn’t hit her until the glowing brand was drawn out of the fire that she would receive the thieves’ mark for her crime. The skin on the back of her left hand bubbled and burned and she screamed at the white hot searing pain of her own flesh burning._

_After they had thrown her into an empty cell and her tears had finally dried, Emma’s blue eyes traced the ruddy red circular shape on her skin. She had seen these marks before; one scar meant thief, two meant your next crime would garner a hanging. Usually the image was the same imprint as the coins of the city, the King’s face in profile, bordered by laurel leaves._

_As she felt her skin continue to burn unnaturally long into the night, she watched the shape shift and cloud until it formed something completely different. She had seen a flock of them in a river once, been told their name by a man in furs whose kindness she did not know how to trust._

_Sitting in a cold, dank dungeon, with an empty stomach for the fourth night in a row, Emma vowed to never go hungry again. Another mark be damned, she would be as free as those birds. She ran her thumb over the burn, let the pain sing in her veins to mark her rebirth._

_When she was released, she would become a better thief. With or without the help of Hood, the people of the city would see the mark on her hand and know she meant business. Soon the Sump, Markettown and all of Mist Haven would come to know her as Swan._  

\--

Emma gripped the hilt of her trusty blade tightly as the boy led her deeper still into the wild heart of the woods. Her skin prickled constantly and the mismatched scars on the back of both her hands itched incessantly. Although her keen gaze swept the trees ceaselessly, she could not find the eyes she was certain were watching them.

She hoped she had read him right this, _Henry._ While her job was supposed to be a simple delivery one, given that it was leading her into what she had started to believe was actually the home of the fairies, maybe it was about to become complicated.

The boy slowed as they came to a large fallen tree, its edges covered in moss. The end faced them, not broken as it should be after coming down in a storm but oddly uniform, as if it had been cut by a saw. _Or,_ Emma huffed to herself, already uncomfortable by the thought, _by magic_. The rings of the tree, which was almost as wide as she was tall, were impossible to count. This tree would have stood in the forest since before Emma’s grandfather had been born. Whoever he had been.  

Henry dropped down to his knees so suddenly that Emma stumbled forward, sword half drawn to defend him from whatever attacker she had failed to see. He glanced back at her with an annoyed glare and she rolled her eyes in response, barely able to restrain herself from throwing up her hands at his royal airs. There was no enemy in sight, so her body relaxed back to a state of general alertness.

She tilted her head curiously at the boy, her mouth pursing in a confused curiosity as she watched him. Henry’s hand was hovering over a small grouping of red tinged toadstools at the base of the trunk and as he leaned over them, a whisper escaped his lips. Emma could not identify any of the words, whatever the language - if indeed it could be described as one - it had not met her ears before today. The sounds he made were odd. Akin to the murmur of an autumn breeze as it wove its way between brittle leaves, tickling them until they lost their grip.

The words flowed back towards her in the air and brushed against her skin in a caress. They caused a shiver to run up her spine, standing up all the hairs on the back of her neck and her eyes widened at the sight of what they wrought.

A soft, pale orange glow had begun to form and it was changing the shape of the tree.

She stumbled back a half step in shock, drawing her sword subconsciously. The light, softer even than that of fireflies, rose out of the toadstools like mist would in the morning air. Where it obscured the end of the trunk, the log now appeared to be a hollow tunnel. Emma squinted into the darkness and was certain there was a second patch of toadstools at the other end of the trunk. And beyond that - barely illuminated but she was so sure - was a clearing with torch lights and the shadowy forms of dwellings. Henry had opened a passageway to somewhere beyond. _But to where?_

The boy stood up only to look back at her terrified face with an almost patronising smile. Without turning to check his path, he took two steps backwards, over the innocuous cloud of light and into the log. Emma fell speechless at the sight of those tendrils of smoky glow as they curled upwards around Henry’s ankles in the mimicry of a hug and then turned casually towards her in invitation.

A new world was unlocked and awaiting at her feet if she would only take a single step. And it called to something within her, as if this was exactly where she was supposed to be. As if beyond this strange entryway, just as had been purported, was the place where all her answers lay. It was thrilling. It terrified her.

What was hidden in the depths of this wood, that it was so protected? Between the way she had been turned around and refused entry, surely none who were unwelcome would make it this far. Yet someone had deemed another barrier necessary to keep out unwanted folk.

These were powerful acts of magic. Utterly unlike the ones she had witnessed in her life. A woman who could listen to a conversation from the next building. A thief who could snap her fingers and steal a coin from a pace away. A man who hunted with a wolf as his partner. They were all so small and inconsequential, hardly more special than the performance of jugglers. But this here felt like a different, more archaic kind of magic.

She wondered if she had bitten off more than she could chew.  

“It’s not far now,” Henry held out his hand to her from within the log, across the strange border marking and she flinched, lost in her thoughts. She stood still, not at all sure of whether she wished to continue in the face of this clear warning to stay out. He tried again. “You told me you’d take me to my mother.”

Emma blinked and her heart sunk. Once as a child she had broken her word to someone and it had eaten away at her ever since. She swore to herself not long after that, that no matter how small the pact, she would never again go back on her word. But in the face of this power, the obvious danger associated with magic she had never seen before and had no way to defend herself from - was it worth maintaining that promise?

Her scars itched with suspicion at the magic but her bones ached for her to move forward. There were fairy folk about tonight and she had already unwittingly embroiled herself in their tale. The boy was clearly one of them; would he turn into a goblin if she crossed through the veil of light? If he was a goblin, was that any reason to go back on her word? Surely goblin children had parents too.

Her gut could not decide whether she would be safe or not. This decision was up to her head. If she crossed the veil and walked in their world, would she ever be able to find her way home? _You knew when you started this journey you were unlikely to return._

Henry waved his still extended hand before her face to bring her attention back to it. He frowned deeply with that determination only children and desperate souls know.

“Come on, you promised.”

_So it comes back to this._ She straightened her shoulders and raised her head, remembering times long gone but never able to be forgotten. A friend’s pleading eyes and the need to save herself above all others. _Promises made to never be broken._

Emma spared a single glance over her shoulder, back at the safety and certainty her world provided. Then she took the boy’s soft palm within her own calloused one and stepped carefully over the toadstools, ducking her head to not hit it on the inside of the trunk.

_Oh, Swan, you’re in it now._

The silence in the passageway closed in on her with that first step, like the ice cold water of a mountain stream. Before they had been able to hear the sounds of scurrying creatures in the underbrush and the occasional crash from a larger beast as they frightened it into fleeing. With that one step, there was nothing.

It only took eight shuffled sidesteps to break out of the other side of the trunk. Even here though, the trees barely moved and she knew enough now to understand why this place was feared by the villagers. Magic had made it unnatural.

The torch lights which she had seen were much further away than she had guessed as their glow filtered out in the air, lighting up the space between them and the settlement. It gave the land an eerie feel, almost dreamlike. _But is it a dream or a nightmare?_

“Kid,” her voice was barely above a whisper but he heard her well from his spot a few paces ahead and turned back to her, eyebrows raised.

He hadn’t turned into a goblin, still looked normal enough to be human but Emma was more wary now that she had so clearly crossed enemy lines. That magic ball of his, why did it lead him to her, when there was civilisation and village lights not too far beyond? Surely there would have been an adventurer there willing to take him on his quest. It made her wonder again if they had not met by accident.

She remembered the mad man with his obscene hat and pressed her fingers against the folded note he had given her. _Was he the same man who gave Henry the ball? Or could he work alongside the old man Henry spoke of?_

Her eyes found the boy’s in the strange false dawn light. “What do we find at the end of the path?”

And indulgent smile took over his face in an instant and the pure innocence of it almost made her breathe easy.

“Home, silly.” He laughed then turned away again, skipping ahead for a few steps so that she had to stumble forward in a rush to catch up. She couldn’t refrain from asking one more question when she fell into step beside him, her hand reaching out to his shoulder without making contact.

“If I take you there, will I live through the night?”

He does not answer.

When they passed the first line of torches and a wave of sudden raucous laughter hit them, Emma thought she may have her answer.

\--

_The birth had not been an easy one._

_Emma had left the city and it’s dungeons and it’s betrayers behind her and returned to the forest where she had once received unwarranted kindness from a man dressed in furs. She had only half believed Graham would still be hunting in those woods but his cabin stood in the same place as she remembered and it only took one blink of his pensive eyes to welcome her once again._

_The pregnancy had been a blur. After a lifetime of learning not to put trust in anyone but herself, she had finally allowed herself to love - and he had repaid her by letting her take the fall for his botched thievery. And cursing her with a babe she was terrified of having._

_Her whole life had been spent running and fighting - for every scrap of food; for every safe bed to lay her weary body. It was a hard enough job to keep her own head above the water, how could she possibly do it with a bairn on her hip? Once, she had been trapped and made escape plans with a friend but when push came to shove, she made the move to save herself and the left the girl behind. Would she do the same to her child? Would she look after it until things got too difficult and then, what, leave him at the same crown run orphanage that had turned her over to slavers for a meagre fee?_

_She was afraid of much to do with this birth._

_The contractions had begun at dawn and continued through the day and well into the night. Her throat was as raw as the rest of her from the screams which had broken from her chest. Graham had done well as a midwife though, coaching her through the pain with the same calmness he always seemed to exude._

_And then there had been a ruddy bundle of warm skin wrapped in rags thrust into her arms._

_Wrinkled and scrawny, the boy would not stop his crying. With the first feeding came more pain and more tears and finally, overwhelmed by it all, Emma put him aside and slipped into a haze of non-sleep._

_The crying continued through the night and the next dawn but a wearied Emma barely noticed. Graham came and went from the room, his expression growing more troubled as Emma refused his coaxing to take the boy into her arms._

_He had tried unsuccessfully to feed her some broth on his last visit but she just turned her head away from both him and the child. The boy had begun a hiccupy cough a few hours before and Graham told her gruffly that he would find a herb woman._

_Now Emma lay facing the boy, his hopeful grey eyes staring up at her for countless minutes while she tried to push down her fear. His coughing was getting worse. The tiny little gurgling sounds were coming from deep in his chest and even with his head turned to the side, the rasping of his breath was obvious._

_She studied his round face, wondering what it might look like in five years time. Would he have her almost perpetual frown or would he smile wide and free like his father. Would he live long enough for her to find out._

_Emma brushed the fuzz on his head and looked into those eyes._

_“Come on, little man,” she whispered, throat still hoarse from the days before. “You’ve caused me enough trouble. Time to get better.”_

_She dozed off with her arms loosely circling his back. And fell into a deep sleep._

_“Now, here they are,” a no-nonsense grandmotherly voice filtered in through her dreams. “And the boy’s sick as a dog, you should have come sooner.”_

_Emma barely noticed the weight of the child being lifted from her side. The air shifted and she felt herself held in place as if a heavy blanket had been laid over her. The older woman clucked, playing with the babe’s cheeks and rocking him in a practiced motion._

_“Your Majesty,” she chided, swinging around to face a dark corner of the room. “I told you, a curse is a curse. Take what is yours and make the most of it.”_

_The shadows of the corner shifted, parting like a veil enough to reveal the shape of a second woman._

_“It was so long ago, Granny,” her voice sounded weary. “I don’t need more servants, especially not human ones. The woods are enough for me.”_

_“Are they?” The child giggled in her arms as she bounced him gently. She stopped immediately when the laugh once more turned to a cough. “Then this great drought through the land is because of your happiness?”_

_“_ Granny _,” she growled._

_“It’s time you had something to live for again.” She stepped towards the shadows, thrusting the babe into the woman’s reluctant grasp._

_Emma lifted her head as the coughing disappeared. In this woman’s arms, the boy was silent and content to nuzzle her shoulder. In her haze she wondered if he would be well if they were to take him away. She did not trust herself to keep him alive for this night, let alone the countless days which would follow. Her folk were brigands and thieves. Some more likely to sell a child than raise one._

_“Will you make him well?” The words startled the women into turning as Emma tried to sit up against the weight of the invisible blanket which held her down. “I don’t think I can.” She fell back against the bed again, dizzy this time, having expended too much energy in fighting the magic._

_Finally the woman stepped out of the darkness. Short hair curled around her face, black as night in the dim light of the room. Emma saw the sadness which painted her eyes, grief which had taken root long before._

_Those eyes lowered to stare down at the bundle of baby in the woman’s arms. Emma watched as she brushed a delicate finger across his brow, a flicker of fondness flashing across her face. “He will be well.” She nodded to the grandmother, who grumbled something in response._

_Emma closed her eyes and smiled softly as she felt a bundle returned to her arms. Then there was silence._

_Graham woke her a few hours later, a village woman at his side, already riffling through her bag of herbs. He stepped up to take the baby out of her arms but froze at the sight which met his eyes. Emma looked down at the bundle of blankets and let out a horrified cry._

_She jumped out of the bed and scampered to the other side of the room to put as much distance between her and that -_ thing, _as she could. Her breaths were heavy as Graham leaned forward to inspect it. His head hung low._

_“I am sorry, Emma.” Her heart thundered. “I shouldn’t have left you alone, this is my fault.”_

_“It was a dream,” shock was fast wearing into anger. She looked at him in askance. “I thought they were a dream.”_

_The healing woman stepped up to the bed curiously. Her eyebrows rose when she saw that no human babe lay in the blankets. “Ah, he was truly sick then, they often take the ones close to death.” She looked over at Emma in sympathy. “The fairies took my sister’s children, too.”_

 

\--

 

And pleasant is the fairy land,

But, an eerie tale to tell,

At the end of every seven years,

We pay a tithe to Hell.

~ The Ballad of Tam Lin (traditional Scottish ballad)

 

\--

 

The music which met her ears when they passed into the village was unlike any she has ever heard. It sung wildly in her veins, stirring her blood in much the same way as good tavern ale. The feeling it evoked reminded her of dark nights when whispered tales were exchanged across the orphanage dormitory when she was a child. When the children would make each other shiver in fear with stories of creeping shadows to remind each other that there were bigger and scarier things than the tyrannical nuns outside the compound walls.

This was where big and scary came to have fun.

While she had known there would be more magic here than she had experienced before, nothing could have prepared her for the true extent of walking into a fairy town. Even after crossing the hidden gateway and feeling the magic soaked into everything, she had not thought about what creatures would dwell there.

There were dancing beings with furred legs and cloven hooves jumping about trees so old they appeared to have faces. Tiny flitting things with wings filled the air and buzzed around her head until she had to swat at them. Crawling shapes which scurried through the brush on all fours at the outskirts of the gathered crowd and had her half drawing her sword in readiness.

“Don’t,” Henry shook his head urgently, eyes wide and fearful as he tried to push the blade back down.

“ _Kid,_ ” she warned carefully, refusing to let go of the only thing she could trust to give her any protection in this strange world. “Don’t ever grab at somebody’s sword,” she gulped, pushing back against the invasive memory which sprang forward. “You never know how hard they’re gonna hit back.”

He narrowed his eyes, face still pinched with worry as he tried to explain. “Only humans carry iron weapons.” His eyes darted over to the crowd of fairy folk. You don’t want them to know you’re not one of them.”

With a panicked beat of her heart, Emma slid the sword back into its sheath and resettled her cloak to cover it. If the lack of access to her sword made her feel exposed, she tried to ignore the sensation.

She bent down so she could whisper directly into Henry’s ear, while still keeping an eye on the fairy folk around them. “What will they do to me, if they find me out?”

“It’s the seven-year,” he looked at her as if she should know exactly what that meant. She blinked at him, unamused. “Everyone’s worried that my mom won’t find a Stag this solstice because she hasn’t appointed a Huntsman. We missed the last tithe and bad things happened. Terrible harvests.”

“I’m guessing that all makes some kind of sense to you, huh.” He shrugs and pushes the corners of his lips down in an exaggerated pout. She let out dry huff. “That’s what I thought.”

She straightened up and stretched her back out with a crack.

“Well, if you can just point me in the direction of the apple tree, you should run on and find your mom.” She nodded to the dancing crowd, trying not to grimace as three giant roast _somethings_ were cut into with a cheer.

“She’s not here,” the boy tugged on her arm and she shook herself free in annoyance. “You have to stay with me until she comes back,” he shot an exaggerated meaningful glance at the nearby creatures for emphasis. “I might not be safe.”

Emma sighed. _Give this kid an inch and he’ll have you running all the way back to Mist Haven for bread._

“Will you take me to the tree, then?” He nodded before blinding her with a smile. Then he took her hand once more and dragged her towards the crowd.

\--

_Henry had not been ill since he had been taken to the Darkwood in the arms of Regina, three years ago._

_He had grown into an energetic little thing, playing games with his fairy nursemaids and hiding when it came to suppertime. He loved flowers and climbed trees so high Regina almost lopped off their low hanging branches in her worry for his safety. Henry was much too curious for his own good and today, it might have just proven to be his downfall._

_Regina had been too late to stop him from taking a bite from the apple. Her hand outstretched to knock it away with magic but the fruit had already fallen from his limp fingers. The food of fairies was not meant for human boys to eat._

_She held him in her arms, a shield of purple cloud instantly closing around them. For long minutes he did not move, his mouth parted even though she had removed the piece of apple from it._

_Regina found herself praying without words, her soul begging the ancient spirit which lay below the tree for its mercy. She had only turned her back for a second, why should he pay for her failure to watch? She would not survive if she lost another so close to her heart._

_When her little boy, so small in her arms, rolled over and purged the food onto the ground she almost cried her joy. Only, instead of jumping up and asking for games, his eyes had closed and he returned to his sleep. Two days later, his body was as still as death._

_The folk with healing magic had barely looked at him but to say he would live. All she could do now was wait until his body was ready to awaken. And count her blessings that the apple had not killed him._

_Regina did not leave his side. After carrying him to his bed, she curled herself into a cramped ball and watched with unblinking eyes. She waited and waited and_ nothing _her people could say would get her to return to her duties. But that didn’t stop them trying._

_“If you insist on sitting here and watching water boil, you need to appoint someone,” Granny was one of the few of her people who was welcome to come and go from the room. Regina was beginning to rethink that decision. “What about my girl? She’d rather suit the position, don’t you think?”_

_“Granny,” a woman at the door shook her head. “I don’t want it.”_

_“I would happily take the mantle of huntsman, My Queen.” Another head had poked through the door, the man slinking his way forwards, followed by a troll who shoved the woman aside. He ducked down in a quick bow. “If you perform the ritual now, I will have time to go to the village and -”_

_“Why not use the boy?” The troll’s guttural voice stunned everyone into silence. He shrugged as the man turned back to him. “He’s already half way dead -”_

_Light and magic and rage exploded from Regina with a roar. The troll never even had a chance to scream. He was incinerated in a heartbeat._

_The room emptied quickly, until only Granny was left, fluffing the blankets over Henry’s little feet. She stopped to stare at Regina for a moment then let out a huff. “Consequences, Your Majesty.” She headed for the door. “Just remember there are always consequences.”_

\--

With her sword hidden and her hood up, no one had yet identified Emma as human. Even still, she felt eyes on her constantly and could barely keep her footing in an attempt to track them all. She hoped it was the boy at her side who drew their attention, as he seemed to know many of the crowd and insisted on acknowledging more of the fairies than she was comfortable with. She wondered if this friendliness might not bode well for her chance of survival this night. _Who is he here?_ She reminded herself again that she did not know anything about the precocious boy. _Am I going to be able survive meeting this mother of his?_

A tall thin girl, her dark hair flowing out from underneath a heavy red hood, caught her eyes for a moment and Emma stumbled against a root. The girl’s mouth immediately curved up into an all too innocent smile and Emma shuddered at the inhuman fangs the gesture revealed. She had definitely bitten off more than she could chew with this job and this boy.

As Henry led her further on, another man caught her eyes. He appeared to be relatively human, his cropped hair and scraggly beard kept much the same as that of the Merry Men of Hood’s court. There was something almost familiar about his startlingly blue eyes. He raised a hand to her in greeting and her own arm twitched with an automatic response.

He disappeared from sight as a group of seven painfully thin waifs moved towards the two of them. They had green hair and skin hard and grey and mottled like the bark of a tree.

“Dryads,” Henry whispered to her, as though that would explain everything. She had a dim memory of Graham once telling her he asked for their permission before cutting firewood. The women closed in like lethargic predators, sauntering to surround them. Their eyes sparked like lightning and the scars on Emma’s hands pinched tight in warning.

Ignoring all of Henry’s advice she acted on pure, battle honed instinct. She swung around, hood falling back and sword slicing through the tip of a creeping vine which had been trying to wrap around her ankles. Her eyes sought the source of a pained cry to her left and she found herself somewhat unsurprised at the sight of one of the women nursing the severed vine as if it were an amputated limb.

The woman hissed at her in unfamiliar words, her eyes flinty. Emma stood her ground, sword still on display, impossible to hide now that she had used it in front of an audience. _Guess the cat’s out of the bag._

“And who is this beauty you have brought to us tonight, little prince?” A woman with whiter hair than the rest asked, as if she had no particular care to hear the answer. She took a few steps towards Emma, eyeing the bare blade as if it were poison.

“I’m the one not afraid to wield human iron,” Her growl rang out clear and true, drawing many sets of distrustful eyes to lock onto the sword. “Threaten me again and one of you will get the next taste.”

Henry pushed forward, heedless of the sword and shot a glare at her to be quiet. He squeezed between Emma and the nymph and puffed out his little chest, as if doing so would intimidate anything bigger than a mouse. Emma almost smiled at his protectiveness. As misguided as it was, here she could use all the help she could get. Careful to keep the sword away from Henry, she shifted her stance to allow for freedom of movement, in case the need arose.

“She’s my friend, Epi.” He pressed back against Emma’s front to keep the dryads from prying them apart as they started to move in closer. “She’s visiting for the feast. I helped her find her way to our village.”

“None of our folk need any help to find their way here,” she mused glancing down at the blade to make her point. “Especially not on a Solstice.”

All at once a gasp went up from the group of women and rose in volume until it was a roar.

“A _human_!” One shouted and Emma found her hands drawn tightly behind her by two of the dryads, just barely managing to hold onto her sword. Henry was knocked forward. The women were stronger than they looked, with grip as firm as stone.

She dropped her weight against their hold and twisted her wrists as much as she could, scrabbling with fingernails and slashing with her blade. Another cry signalled her success as one of the women let her go, leaving behind a stripe of grey-green blood where the iron had scraped a piece of soft bark away. Her left leg lifted to kick out at her other captor when a thick branch wrapped around her knees and brought her crashing to the ground. _Idiot, Swan,_ she admonished herself mentally with an angry shake of her head. _These aren’t streetfolk you can escape just by being scrappy._

The white haired woman knocked the sword out of her hands and she watched in dismay as it slid across the forest floor.

Their commotion had turned curious heads throughout the crowd and the chatter and music had reduced to a few murmuring notes in the distance.

“The Princeling has brought us a human for the tithe!” The new voice was high pitched and loud but she couldn’t find the source. She tried to crawl out of the branch’s hold but a tall man with broad shoulders and clay-like orange skin clasped her arms easily behind her back.

“Well done, boy,” he said with a deep, gravelly voice. “Your mother will be proud of you.”

Emma twisted her neck this way and that but could not catch sight of Henry. He was gone, lost in the crowd quickly closing in around her. Then she was being lifted off the ground and carried to the centre of the gathering and real fear began to stir low in her stomach. 

\-- 

It was hardly a new experience for Emma, finding herself chained up. From the time she was ten and the orphanage sold the oldest children on to slavers, she had begun to lose count of how many shackles she had needed to escape.

But never before in all her adventures, had she found herself chained to a structure she could only describe as an upright altar. Made from the stump of a dead tree which had been as wide as Emma was tall, the surface of it had been pared back so that she was pressed against a mostly flat surface.

From her restricted position, standing on cleared ground with arms and legs stretched and secured tightly on either side of her body, she could make out some of the carvings which covered the worn piece of oak. Intricate knots and curled leaves from trees she could not identify wove around strange symbols. A raised section she guessed to be about a hand-width across, pressed hard against the middle of her back.

The ground beneath her feet was stained darker than the rest of the forest dirt. She had a really bad feeling about where that stain had come from.

The cries from her audience began to die down as one slimy voice spoke up.

“In our Huntsman’s absence, I will take his place to perform the tithe.” Emma turned her head to place the man’s voice and gulped. The dark skin and salt and pepper beard of a man who would not normally be intimidating, peaked out from under a moulded leather mask. It gave him narrow eyes, a long face, the pointed ears of a goat and more impressively, two wide horns which curled back over his head, to taper out at the sides.

_Fairies, magic and masks. “_ This is not what I expected when I got up this morning,” she muttered.

Hands obscured her vision and she thrashed her head in vain as a second mask was tied tightly around her face. She was thankful when it did not obscure her mouth or nose and sat comfortably around her eyes. _Small mercies,_ she supposed. _Now, how to get out of this one._

She tugged on her shackles but they were too tight to slip out of. There was only smooth wood near her fingers, nothing long and thin she could use to pick the locks. If indeed fairies used normal keys.

She was only distracted for a moment before the chanting met her ears, then her blood began to quicken. Her shoulders hunched and her head shifted forward in defiance when a knife appeared in the masked man’s hand. A cloud of green had begun to form around the blade and she could feel its magic stretch out through the air. The magic shifted and she found she could not move her limbs, merely stare at the masked man. The terror rose in her throat, thick and bitter.

“I thought only humans carried blades here,” she challenged him while her eyes darted from side to side, searching for a sympathetic face in the crowd. All those she could see were grim, barring a few fairy folk who seemed to be undeniably excited at the prospect of her death. She shuddered and looked back at the man in the mask, his chanting uninterrupted. “What makes me the lucky sacrifice?”

He came to a natural pause in his spell, the sickly green glow now settled along the length of the wavy blade of the dagger.

“You are the tithe to continue our seasons,” he states in a frustratingly lilting voice. “You should feel privileged to carry out our Queen’s will.”

_Yeah, this is definitely not good._ Although her widened eyes gave away her fear, she sneered at his words.

“Then where is your Queen?” She asked the question with scorn, staring him down as he pranced closer, the blade held between them. He seemed to fear the dagger as much as she feared its purpose. Behind the mask his eyes glinted with the light of the magic swirling between them.

He stepped onto the clear ground before the altar, the crowd around them completely silent now, waiting.  

His grip shifted on the hilt and with the sinking, hopeless feeling in her heart, Emma knew she would die here tonight. At the hands of the fairy folk who had once stolen her child. All because she agreed to carry out a simple delivery job.

“Where is this woman you kill in the name of?” The dagger hummed in the air, magic vibrating against magic the closer it moved towards her heart. “What _Queen_ hides away while her subjects kill for her?”

Her heart beat faster until it pulsed with the same frequency as the magic. Something in her began to unfurl; a light on the inside. Enough to give her hope. Her gaze focussed on the dagger and it began to slow.

“I do not _hide_.”

The voice reverberated clearly through the crowd from behind the altar, causing a flurry of movement. It sank down Emma’s back like a trickle of warm water and she could taste it in the air. Honey heavy with an edge of tang. Like sweet crisp apples bitten into on a cold winter’s day.

She wanted nothing in that moment but to turn her head and see who it belonged to.

The masked man lowered the dagger immediately and jumped backwards, bowing low for long moments. “My Queen,” he stuttered, clearly in awe of the woman. “We were afraid you would not return in time.” He straightened again, keeping his eyes on the ground before him. “But a human found their way into the woods, so we hoped to complete the sacrifice for you.”

“ _Sidney_ ,” the voice dripped with open disdain. “Take that mask off at once. You are not my Huntsman.”

As the man abashedly hurried to obey her command, a small bundle of energy bounced into Emma’s eyeline. “Henry,” she felt the relief rush through her and she gave the boy an unfettered smile. “You came back.”

His face was pinched with concern as he ripped off her mask and threw it to the ground. Now she could see it was fashioned to look like the face of a deer, with two young antlers sprouting above the eyes. She looked back to Henry as he reached to undo her shackles, only to jerk his hand back with a wince. The magic had not yet released her.

“Mom,” he demanded, looking over Emma’s shoulder with a pleading face.

_Oh no,_ she shut her eyes tight, willing for it to not be true.

With a single magical word from the woman - _the Queen,_ Emma groaned internally - the cloud of light disappeared and Henry was able to safely undo the first of her bonds. Her hand reached out to squeeze his shoulder gratefully. He had brought the one person who could put a halt to this madness, whatever happened next would be another story.  He had saved her.

“This is not the first of your transgressions,” the voice continued as Henry fumbled with the second of her shackles, still speaking to the man with the dagger. “You seem to believe yourself to be above my direction and that suggests a banishment is in order.”

“My Queen,” he gasped, mouth gaping and head shaking in dismay. “Please, _Regina,_ I beg of you -”

“Sidney of the Glass Singers,” Emma winced as the voice thundered through the air but could not feel sympathy for the man who would have been her murderer. “You are hereby _banished_ from the Darkwood. Do not return unless I deign to summon you, I have had enough of your insubordinations.”

Hands now free, Emma leaned down to release her left foot, while Henry worked on the right. Neither of them saw the man shrink into himself, drop the dagger and mask to the ground and slink off into the crowd.

The moment she was free, Emma stumbled away from the altar, keen to put distance between herself and what had almost happened. _No delivery job is worth sticking around for this._ She could ask her questions elsewhere, or later, or never. _It’s time to get out of here ._

Henry gripped her arm to steady her and she glanced down at his mop of dark hair. She might almost miss this strange little fairy child. Her head lifted and for the first time she caught the gaze of the woman who had also been instrumental in her rescue.

With eyes that blazed bright like a hawk’s and lips as red as blood, it was no wonder this woman was their Queen. Lustrous dark hair fell in waves around her face and shoulders, halfway to her breasts where it contrasted starkly between the tan of her skin and the red of her clinging velvet gown.

Emma jerked her eyes back up to the woman’s face when she realised her gaze was lingering.

The regal glare which had at first been focussed on her sunk sharply into an open mouthed gape of surprise. Emma shifted with uncertainty, hand lingering in vain over an empty scabbard. She gulped at the wild fury which took over as the woman stepped forward menacingly.

_“You!”_ Emma blinked, eyes wide as she tried to hold her ground - former thieves did not bow to royalty, fairy or otherwise.

“Me?” She was baffled by the suddenness of this new attack.

“How did you find -?” The woman’s eyes swung between Henry and Emma as she reached for him. Her hand curled around his shoulder and pulled him close into a protective embrace. He squirmed and she held him tight for a moment. When her hand opened and she set him free, she let out a soft a gasp as if she were shocked by her own behaviour. “How did you find my son?”

Emma’s brow creased and she shrugged, hands coming up in a placating gesture, hoping to soothe the woman. _Maybe I’m not out of the woods yet,_ she glanced up at the trees. _Metaphorically speaking._

“Henry found me.”

Regina studied his scowling face in bewilderment. “How..?”

Emma looked between the mother and son, trying to find an understanding of the words not being said. _What did Henry say about his mother,_ her eyes darted to the side as she tried to remember what it was. _That she was dangerous and that -_

Her face hardened as a change came over her. An awareness. She was here for answers, could it be that she had already found them? What if he had not died or stayed as a babe for eternity as all the tales suggested? Her fingers curled around the note still tucked into her pocket and she looked up at the woman with narrowed suspicious eyes. She could almost remember…

_Yes._

This was her answer.

“It was you.” The statement shattered Henry’s scowl. He looked up at Emma with all the anticipation of a child whose greatest dream had just been revealed before him.

Regina brought her hand to cover her mouth but it could not stop the gasp of horror from sliding out from between her lips. Henry could not take his eyes off Emma as she stalked forward, feeling as though she were in her element for the first time tonight.

“He’s my son, isn’t he. He didn’t die at all.” There would be no more questioning it after tonight. “It was you who stole him from me that night.” Her eyes flashed at the memory. “I was bone tired but I _remember_ your dark eyes watching me from the shadows. I thought you would kill me but you left me…” she tugged angrily at the rawhide strip looped around her wrist and Regina glanced down at it, remembering the same moment as clear as day. “You took him away and left me a changeling babe of _sticks_ with an apple for its heart.”

The anger burst out of her in a wave and all of a sudden she could feel the hilt of her sword slide into her waiting fingers. She did not know how it had come to be there, all that mattered was that it was there. She slashed out with it, catching Regina by surprise so that she barely had time to skitter away from the swing.

A trio of black clad guards and several fairies from the crowd stepped forward immediately at the defence of their queen. When no command was forthcoming from the slack jawed woman, they swayed back, unwilling to risk their place in the Darkwood after one banishment had already been pronounced that night.

But then Emma remembered the rest of it. The instant the frustration of not knowing and the grief of loss had worn away and she had felt a sense of _relief._ That her worries over how she would live her delinquent life with a child at her side were gone. That he would never know how an empty stomach howled or what waking up from a bed of mucky straw on a street corner felt like. That she would never have a chance to fail him as a parent. Those decisions had been taken out of her hands and she had been able, with Graham’s help, to carve out a better life for herself.

Emma looked down at Henry and all of her anger curdled into guilt. She sheathed her sword and hung her head in shame. Was she really in a position to be angry at the woman who had raised her child in her absence, who looked at him as though she were afraid of losing him? When she had been so quick to assume he was dead and move on with her life.

“I knew it was you.” The boy was almost glowing. She swallowed down a grimace. What would he think of her if he knew the whole story?

Emma took a hasty backwards step as a cloud of purple magic began to form between the Queen’s hands. Henry was too preoccupied with the revelation to notice the reason for her suddenly fearful eyes.

“Your Majesty?” The hesitant voice of one of the black dressed guards interrupted the moment. Emma relaxed an inch when the magic evaporated and Regina swung around to direct her fierce glare at the man instead. “The moon,” he gestured up at the great orb in the sky and the eyes of the remaining crowd turned to look as well.

Regina waved her hand at him with a terse nod. “Hurry,” she commanded brusquely. “We haven’t much time.”

A flurry of movement led to two more guards entering the space before the altar. Between them, hands tied tightly behind his back, was a village man who stumbled on unsteady feet. With a few practiced movements, his bonds were cut and he was secured to the altar where Emma had been shackled only minutes before.

Her shock wore off the moment they wrapped the mask across his eyes, antlers pointing at the night sky. She rushed forward through the crowd to stand between the drowsy man and the fairies, hand back on her drawn sword. She felt fire in her veins and her arm shook with anger as she raised the blade of iron to point at the Fairy Queen who had raised her son. What sort of mother was she to let her son witness sacrificial murder?

“I don’t know what this stupid tithe is all about but I can’t let you kill this man.” Emma shifted into a better stance, angling her body away from Regina to face the guards. She could not look at Henry. “No one dies tonight.”

“You humans with your little swords,” Regina scoffed, eyebrows quirked in contempt. “You know nothing of the world beyond your own feet.” She stalked forward, heedless of the sharp blade pointing at her throat. “Who do you think nourishes the ground your food grows in? Maintains the flow of the rivers so that you can drink from them and keeps the sun high in the sky so you do not grow cold?”

Emma gulped at the sight of such self-righteousness in the woman’s eyes. Her words sounded akin to the tales Graham had told her when he was first teaching her to track. He had been a hunter by trade but each time he made a kill, he would leave an offering in a makeshift shrine in the woods. He believed that if no sacrifice was made to the Forest Gods, his ability to find food would be taken away.

“We fairies have kept this world in good health since long before you humans were wrapping your feet to protect them from thorns. The tithe has a purpose, just as all of our rituals do.”

“He’s an innocent man,” she threw back with what words she had, not willing to let the fight go in the face of a pretty speech. “Just as innocent as I was a moment ago when you saw fit to free me.” The woman’s chest dropped.

“I do not like to kill,” Regina admitted through gritted teeth. “But the consequences - “ she cut herself off with a grimace.

With a wave of her hand two more guards stepped forward, ivory swords pointed towards Emma. She blocked one blade, knocked it away and ducked the swing of the other, sidestepping to pass behind the guards with a twirl. _Finally a battle I can win,_ she smiled.

Kicking out at the first guard's legs, she looked past the duo and her revelry dissipated. They had drawn her away from the altar and another guard was picking up the wavy dagger and Huntsman’s mask.

_Damn it,_ she admonished herself, twisting so that the guards’ next attack was blocked by the swirling of her cloak.

She dove for a gap between their bodies, threw her shoulder into a nose and smirked at the crunch. Reversing her sword to punch out with the butt, she closed in on the final guard.

A scream peeled out through the air and her eyes snapped up in time to see the village man’s head slump down to his chest. The wave of defeat she felt was immediately followed by confusion when she realised he had not been touched by the dagger. Nor was anyone standing near him.  

Everything seemed to stop for a moment, all eyes on the altar. Then another cry rang out.

“Ahh!” After this night she would forever be attuned to Henry’s voice. A crowd of heads snapped up to find what had distressed the child.

The boy was leaning away from something unseen, pulling and jerking in an attempt to free himself. Emma stepped forward without hesitation, feeling Regina do the same from where she stood. The change of position allowed her to see the cause of his distress, even if she was utterly unable to make sense of it.

Out of a shimmering silver-white oval, which seemed to float in thin air, a hand had reached out to grab tightly to Henry’s arm. And it was not letting go.

“Henry,” from Emma it had been a gasp but the name was echoed in a panicked cry from Regina.

“Mom,” he squirmed against the grip, trying to pry the fingers away from him. He looked between them, eyes wide and afraid. “Help...”

Regina leapt forward a split second before Emma could move.

They threw themselves at the boy just as a second hand wrapped around his waist and tugged him backwards through the floating window. Regina caught hold of his fingers and Emma hooked her free arm around the woman’s middle, just in time to be sucked through with them.

Emma shuddered and tried to tighten her grip without putting anyone in danger of a sword wound. Her stomach rebelled when she looked down and saw only blackness. A high pitched whistling in her ears had begun to make her head ache.

This was worse than being magically restrained to the altar. Worse than any of the little magics she had always been able to weather. Whatever was happening to them now, as they were tugged through an icy darkness at great speed, this was beyond her reckoning.

“Let him go,” Regina gritted out, struggling to keep her grip on Henry’s small fingers. “Give me my son, demon.”

Emma shifted her head to the side, trying to see what it was that had tried to steal Henry. Their incessant pace seemed to slow and she was able to identify a female form beyond them. Regina’s hand slipped when she turned her head to smile icily at them.

“ _Mother_ ,”  the sudden fear in her voice was enough warning for Emma to realise what was about to happen. Regina tried to fix her grip on Henry but it was too late, she had already begun to slip. They found themselves falling away, even as Henry and his kidnapper sped on into the void.

 

\--

 

_I turn to the darkness where there shine_

_grave other eyes that look in mine –_

_black mirrors overcast_

_by an old past._

_~ Robert D.Fitzgerald, Moonlight Acre_

 

\--

 

_“Mother!” Regina’s voice echoed savagely across the night sky. She was calling her out. “I know you’re listening, the moon is too bright tonight for you to ignore me.”_

_Cruel laughter made her shudder and tighten her fists against the memories of so much pain._

_“How very like you, Regina, to call me when I had no choice but to answer.”_

_Regina spun to face the woman, dressed in rich silvers and blacks much the night sky itself. As always, she had to fight to contain her rage at the carefree quirk of Cora’s lips. This woman had meddled in her life for long enough._

_“You chose to answer all such calls when you took the mantle of the Empress of the Moon.”_

_The woman’s facade wavered and she sneered. “That decision was strategic at best.” She waved her hand to brush off the comment. “You know very well there is more power in the night sky than almost anywhere else.”_

_“Yes,” Regina spat sourly. “The harvest included.”_

_“Come now, don’t be bitter,” Cora studied her with reproach. “To be the Harvest Queen is a great honour.” She smirked, eyeing her daughter up and down. “All the humans pray to you, can you not feel their worship strengthening you?”_

_“I never wanted their worship!” Regina’s nails cut into her palms, voice shrill as it loudly shattered the quiet of the night air._

_“Don’t be petulant, child.” The woman chided with an icy wrath._

_“I only ever wanted to be happy, to be loved.” Regina regretted the truth of the words as soon as they left her mouth. Cora sighed, long suffering as if she were the one to be hurt by her child._

_“You have always been loved, Regina.” She said it with a small shake of her head. “But why you persisted with that boy, Daniel, I will never know.” She pursed her lips in distaste._

_“Why couldn’t you leave us be?” Regina asked the only question she needed to know the answer to tonight. Cora blinked at her._

_“He was the minor son of a Horse Lord,” she said shortly, hands linking casually in front of her body and shoulders hitching in a modicum of a shrug. “You could never have realised your full potential with him weighing you down.”_

_“So you killed him because I loved him.”_

_Cora looked over her daughter, the recently appointed Harvest Queen, in charge of making the land ready and keeping it well so that the humans would have good crops to eat. That she had not risen to the power their prayers and worship offered her was such a disappointment._

_“I killed him because you would have trapped yourself in a worthless relationship instead of taking your place beside me to rule over the masses as we have planned for centuries.”_

_“Daniel was never worthless!” Her yowl was joined by a burning power which flung from her hands to surround Cora. The woman was shocked as her arms locked to her sides and her back was held rigid. The magic was bright gold and hot as the sun. She recognised this power and it did not come from her daughter._

_Real fear began to creep through her bones._

_‘That’s right,_ mother _,” Regina growled, tightening the magic until Cora let out an uncharacteristic gasp. “He leant me his power.”_

_The Sun Lord had come to her with a deal much too good to be true. But then, he had fought with her mother for almost an eternity so perhaps it made sense. Rumplestiltskin would lend her his power, perfect for battling his mirror opposite, the Empress of the Moon. All she had to do in return was this, for he was forbidden from directly attacking their common enemy._

_A window of light opened up behind Cora, a vortex ready to take her away, already pulling at her skin._

_“You will die for your sins.” The words were a dark promise, spoken from beneath a wrathful brow._

_Regina stalked towards her mother, struggling in vain against her bonds. A cruel smile, much like those Cora had once directed at her, contorted her lips._

_She shoved at the woman’s shoulders and sent her flying backwards into the abyss. “Die so that we may all live in peace.”_  

**\--**

The world had begun to lighten the moment Regina lost her grip on the woman and they landed in a heap, limbs crushing each other into the cracked clay beneath them.

Emma scrabbled to her hands and knees only to be thwarted as her head jerked forward. Regina’s body had landed on top of her cloak, trapping Emma as effectively as a if it were a leash. One hand went to push the unmoving woman off the fabric, the other struggled to undo the tie of her cloak with one hand before it choked her.

Regina groaned and blinked her eyes against the rosy light. Finally free, Emma shot up to standing, eyes wide open and staring. The landscape around them was not what it had been a moment ago. There was no forest, no trees at all. Grey flakes of sandy stone covered the ground which stretched around them like a desert. In the middle distance stood a few wind battered curves of rock but there was nothing else in sight.

Emma spun, looking for the sword she had lost in their fall and came at once to a stop. Behind her, the horizon was lit by a curve of orange and red. It shot up into the sky at intervals, pushing ever changing ripples out against the blue behind it. Before she had time to study the strange occurrence, movement from behind made her turn back to her ill-made companion.

The woman struggled to her feet and raised a hand to her forehead, trying to steady herself.

“Where is he?” Emma demanded, stalking forward in a muddle of anger and mistrust. “For that matter, where are _we_ and how the hell did we get here?”

“This is _your_ fault,” the woman snarled, fists clenching and body rearing towards her. “I should kill you where you stand.”

“ _My_ fault?” Emma scoffed, completely taken aback. “How is this my fault?”

“You should never have come to the Darkwood,” she shoved at Emma’s shoulders. “If I lose him, you will know an enemy like no other -”

“You’re angry at _me?”_ Emma recovered her footing and stepped up into Regina’s space menacingly. “I’m the one who should be furious, you -”

Regina opened her mouth to cut her off again - tell her how she would have been less distracted, would have got to Henry’s side quicker - when something in the distance caught her eye. Her gaze darted over the landscape for a moment, eyes widening as she grew fearful at something behind Emma.

The air rattled and all at once they were deafened by the roaring of many beasts. Both women clapped their hands to their ears, bodies bowing against the unnatural pressure of the sound.

The earth began to rumble and they stared at the red streaked horizon. The grey earth was shattering, exploding outwards as a shape came towards them. No, many shapes. Emma narrowed her eyes, trying to see better. _What makes that sound?_

A moment later her question was answered when the earth opened up before them. Out of the shale rose a four legged creature, the size of a small wagon. With leathery wings, tail and shovelled clawed paws, it had somehow made it’s way through the ground itself. It’s maw was wide and flat and full of teeth and it’s six eyes formed a crescent  across its brow.

Emma felt her heart stop. She had never heard of a beast like this.

It jumped out of the earth, shook the gray dust from it’s wrinkled hide and yowled back at the other creatures. Then, in one bound, it stopped at their feet, audibly sniffing at the air. Emma’s heart clenched then gave a sluggish heave. It’s tail twitched this way and that while viscous drool formed along its fangs. She had no sword, she had nowhere to run - if it decided to attack, she was defenseless.

_The Queen has magic though._ She watched as it shifted its weight to powerful hind legs and tipped her head towards the woman, hoping she would catch on. _New plan._ Emma mimicked the beast, shifting her stance, ready to draw it away from Regina so that the woman could use her magic against it.

Poised to leap, a sudden movement drew the beast’s attention at the last moment. Almost twice the size of the first creature, Emma gulped at what must be an adult of their kind bounding towards them. With larger eyes and smoother, filled-out skin, it lorded over the youngling. A sharp nip to the back of the small one’s neck and it cowered, pressing its nose into the dirt in apology.

The large beast spun on its heels and the women ducked as it leapt over their heads. The youngling followed it, bounding around them to chase its parent away from the red horizon.

By now the ground was shaking with the approach of the rest of the herd. Emma reached for Regina instinctively, trying to get closer to form a larger obstacle, something the creatures would avoid. She was too late.

The first of the beasts swerved around them before diving under the earth for a great length. The others did not have enough time to move around them. Leathery hide after leathery hide flew above them as they cowered, pressing themselves into the ground as low as they could.

Minutes ticked by, their bodies quivering from the shaking of the earth. Then it was finally over.

Regina was the first to stand, holding her head high in an attempt to regain her composure. She brushed off the velvet of her dress and shook the dirt from the toes of her delicate boots. Emma pushed to her knees, not yet ready to trust her feet.

It sounded like a patter before it became a thump. The last of the beasts burst out of the ground inches from Regina and sent the woman falling down to the ground again. It’s tail whipped downwards and she let out a cry as it cut into her. Then it was gone, chasing the rest of its kind.

Emma crawled to the woman, wary of any more surprises. Regina was clutching her left hand, where blood had started to well up in a slash across her palm.

Looking about, Emma found the shape of her cloak against the dirt. She reached out for it, checking the damage. A few tears but nothing that couldn’t be repaired, mostly the weave had been roughened by the great paws of the beasts.

She flipped it inside out and rummaged through a hidden pocket. Smiling with success, she drew out the folded strip of cloth. It was still clean despite the shape her cloak was in.

“Here,” she returned to Regina, holding out the bandage. “Let me wrap it for you.”

The Queen stared up at her, nostrils flaring in distaste. With a reluctant nod, she held out her hand between them. Emma’s fingers were gentle, holding the injured hand delicately and wrapping the cloth quickly and firmly around the wound before it could get dust inside.

She tied it off with a practiced knot and admired her handiwork. When she looked back at Regina - was caught by those piercing eyes - she remembered why they were there.

“What now?” The question came out quiet and hesitant.

"Oh,” Regina stood up in a flurry of movement, as though freed from a trance. “ _Henry!_ "

She stumbled forward as her wail cut across the alien landscape. Her eyes were wide and fearful as she swung about in wild arcs, searching for some sign as to which direction her mother and son had continued in.

"Hey," now on her feet, Emma tried to get her attention. She too was eying off their surroundings, unhappy with the lack of cover in a place which had already proven to be filled untold dangers. She wasn’t too happy with the company she had been dumped there with either. A glint of light led her to her sword and she scurried over to it, glad to feel it’s familiar weight in her hand when she picked it up.  

"No, no, _no_ ," Finding no evidence of their path, Regina wrapped her arms around herself and muttered wistfully into the air, "How did she survive this place? Why did she bring him _here_?" She stopped suddenly at the thought, staring off into the distance, a hand lifting to her forehead. "She's killed him."

"What’s so scary about your mother? Surely she won’t hurt a kid." Emma tentatively raised a hand between them as if to reach out and reassure Regina. She paused before the touch could carry through, frowning at the sudden wave of sympathy which has so quickly tried to overwhelm her and instead let the hand linger in the air. "Henry seems like a smart boy. We just have to find him...” she trailed off at the thought of what might lie in their way. “We’ll find him, I promise."

She watched Regina closely as the woman took deep breaths and rhythmically ran her uninjured hand over the other, attempting to regain her composure. Emma felt a pang somewhere in her stomach at the display. She wondered if she would feel the same fear, rather than this vague worry, if she had raised the boy. She allowed the thought to push her forward again to loosely grip the woman's wrist once in what she hoped was a comforting squeeze.

Time froze. The air around them ticked over for a single sluggish beat, illuminating with glaring awareness the point of contact between their bare skin. Then the spell broke.

Regina's whole body recoiled in one explosive movement. She tore herself away from the touch, shooting such a forceful glare in the blonde's direction that Emma was briefly worried it would be accompanied by a raging torrent of wildfire. She already felt like she had been burned.

"You don't understand what this place will do to someone from our world!" Her anger was rapidly shifting towards hysteria at the frustration she felt having to give lessons when her son had been kidnapped by the most dangerous person she knew. "Just as you have grown with stories warning against spending too much time amongst my folk or eating our food or singing our songs, _we_ have been taught to fear what lies beyond The Veil."

Emma narrowed her eyes, trying her best to focus on the tirade in the hope it would provide her with some answers. "To a full blooded fairy, any time in this realm does not cause us death but will bring about a neverending suffering of the kind no human could - _wait_ ." She frowned at Emma, intense gaze snapping over her features so fast the blonde felt herself swallow dryly. "A full blooded human should not have survived their first breath of what counts as air in this world." She took a threatening step forward, her eyes flashing menacingly. "What _are_ you?"

The abrupt change of subject took Emma by surprise and she was caught with her mouth half open, gaping like a fish. She blinked under the unwavering dark gaze and clicked her teeth together, gritting her jaw at the sudden confrontation.

This woman had done nothing but frustrate and confuse her since they met. The idea that she could be anything but human - she mentally shook her head at the thought - was beyond absurd. _But you don't know for sure,_ said that traitorous voice in her head which often spouted truths. _You could be anything because you don't_ know _anything._

Emma struggled to hold back a growl. This was the second dangerous world she had found herself in tonight, with no fore-knowledge of either. She usually tried to find out as much as she could about a mess before she jumped into it. Here, she was at a loss and between that and the woman she was stuck with, she was itching to hit something.

Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, shifting further into Regina's space. It was only when she realised her hand had closed on the hilt of her blade and already loosened it from its sheath that she remembered.

_Henry will be scared too._

All at once the anger dropped through her fingers and bled towards the ground. In its absence, her skin felt cold and clammy but she stepped backwards and shook herself. Looking away from Regina, she began to feel closer to her normal self. Releasing a brief huff through her nose she allowed her eyes to rise again and meet the gaze of the other woman.

"I was a foundling." The words fell from her by rote and without any hint of emotion. "There's nothing special about me."

Regina studied her for long moments. “I beg to differ,” she murmured before strengthening her voice. “Tell me why you are here?” She tilted her head slightly. “I left you to your life, why couldn’t you have stayed there and left us to ours?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself.” Emma slid the wooden ring off her finger and held it out to the woman. “Someone wanted me to be in the Darkwood.” Regina turned the ring in her fingers, eyeing the engravings with interest. “And I think they arranged to have Henry meet me.”

With pursed lips, Regina handed the ring back and Emma slipped it onto her finger.

“I don’t think that is the work of my mother but one can never be certain -” Her eyes widened comically as they landed on something in the distance. “Oh no.”

Emma swung to follow her gaze, sword drawn in an instant. _What now?_ But this was not an enemy she could fight with force. “Sandstorm,” she exclaimed lowly, sheathing her sword and picking up her cloak. Then she turned on her heel. “Follow me.”

They raced towards the jagged rock formations in the distance, checking the storm’s progress over their shoulders intermittently. On the third such check, Emma decided they would make it just in time.

Bypassing the first few outcroppings they ducked behind one which curved away from the approaching storm. At its base was a smooth bowl, one that would be large enough for both of them to shelter in.

Without asking for permission, Emma tugged on Regina’s good hand, pulling her down to sit on crossed legs. She unfurled the cloak and flicked it down to cover them. It would serve almost as well as a blanket or tent providing they stayed close.

Regina opened her mouth to berate Emma for her audacity but the woman simply shot her a glare in the rosy light which filtered through the cloak. She sneered in reply, disgruntled at being forced to sit pressed up to the woman who had birthed her son and now invaded their lives. Twice trapped now, it seemed like she would have to get used to her company.

When the storm hit, she was glad to not be alone. Even if she could feel the woman itching to speak with every breath. With it, the storm brought a pressing absence of noise, a blanketing of their senses.

“I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” the woman started hesitantly and Regina had to resist rolling her eyes. “I’m Emma.”

“Hmm,” the sound that came from her throat was almost a growl.  

“Emma Swan.”

“Yes,” she sighed, remembering the day the girl had been born. “I suppose you are.” 

**\--**  

_“Are you sure he will come, David? It’s already so -_ oh _-” Snow’s words were cut off as another contraction wracked her body. They were coming fast now, too fast and she was so afraid of what would happen next. She gasped in some air and completed the sentence even though her point had already been made. “It’s so close.”_

_“He will,” her husband, David crouched by the bedside to wipe a wet rag across her brow. She leaned into his touch gratefully. “My brother and I were granted one boon each, he will be here.”_

_“Yes, yes, I’m here,” a new voice rumbled from the doorway, bringing with it the smell of sawdust and polish. The old man shuffled into their house slowly, balancing a small cradle and a toolbox in his arms. The door swung shut behind him and he placed his burdens on the ground before turning to face a now standing David with pursed lips. “Well my grandson, I wish it were under happier circumstances that we are meeting.”_

_“Geppetto?” Even though he knew who this man was, David had only heard him described in legend. Known as The Carpenter or the Wood Carver, Geppetto was the God humans prayed to when building a house or raising a barn. He would keep the joints tight and the wood strong, keep your home standing tall._

_“Come here my boy,” a wide grin broke out from beneath short white whiskers and he waved his arm to bring the man closer. “Let me get a look at you.”_

_David stepped forward, hesitating briefly to glance back at his wife. Geppetto smiled at him with encouragement, his eyes twinkling as he took in the tall strong farmer._

_“Hmm, you look like your brother.” The comment startled a laugh from David, despite the grave circumstances. Even Snow let out a titter._

_“We were twins,” he shifted on his heels, giving his grandfather a smile. “I think that’s to be expected.”_

_“Yes,” he glanced meaningfully around the homely little building with its stings of drying herbs and expertly carved wooden cups. “But you are so very much different to him.”_

_They both remembered the boy who, with no more than fifteen summers under his belt, had wanted nothing more than to fight like a knight. He used the boon granted by his grandfather’s magic to ask for a sword that could weather the cut of any blade. He adventured for a many months, finding renown easily with his bold attitude and odd, unbreakable wooden blade. But he believed himself invincible and an arrow caught him in the chest during battle. The sword was lost and David learnt the lesson to be careful what he wished for._

_Another cry from the woman on the bed brought the men out of their reverie for a lost kinsman._

_“I think - it’s - coming,” Snow gritted out between forceful breaths. David ran to her side, taking up her hand to give her something to hold onto. He turned back to Geppetto with fierce eyes, the man now bent over the cradle with a chisel, smoothing out the grooves of the scrollwork._

_“You will keep the baby safe?” He kisses his wife’s hand, feels her squeeze impossibly harder, every inch of her body tensed. “We can’t allow it to suffer for this curse.”_

_“All I can promise, is that the fairy will not find the child, will not be able to follow where it goes.”_

_“David -”_

_In the moments which follow, the baby takes its first breaths. A girl, a little baby girl who Snow holds in her arms and then -_

_“A name,” Geppetto prompts, “I must have a name for the spell to work.”_

_“Emma,” the word falls from Snow’s mouth in defeat. This bright light in her arms will be ripped from her in moments. She busses her lips against peach fuzz hair. “Her name is, Emma.”_

_With quick movements of his chisel, the name is added to the runes already carved into the side of the cradle. As he flicked the last curl of wood away, the piece began to emanate a dull glow._

_“Now, Snow, I’m so sorry.”_

_Tears fall from three sets of eyes as the baby is gently lain down in the cradle. Geppetto slid out a hidden panel from near her feet and drew it up until it sat just below her chin. A cloud of purple whirled into existence in the centre of the cabin as they clipped the cover into place and the cradle, along with the baby in it, disappeared into thin air._

_The Queen was a raging fury when she appeared. But when she tried to lash out, she found herself paralysed. In naming her price and casting her curse she had unwittingly bound herself to it. She could take no more revenge on Snow than what she had sworn to take._

 

\--

 

_In living there is always_

_the terror_

_of the poison finding_

_your heart_

 

_of something_

_whose stingers_

_will stretch over you_

_like stars_

_with an ancient burning_

_patience._

_~ Dorothy Porter, Bluebottles_

 

\--

 

The storm took what felt like hours to pass but when it did, the world was oddly calm.

They threw off the cloak and welcomed the fresh air after being restricted for so long, sitting mostly in uncomfortable silence.

Emma had not known how to voice all of the questions she had about Henry, about his and Regina’s life together in the Darkwood. About how he had grown into the boy she had so quickly started to feel a fondness towards, both so eager for adventure and ready to protect those in need. Questions about why she had taken him from her arms all those years before.

Regina had spent most of the time trying to spark her magic to keep her mind clear of the fearful thoughts running rampant in her mind. She had not been successful at either task.

“Where do we start?” Emma asked quietly, inspecting the bandage from afar to ensure it was sitting flat and hadn’t been bled through. She shook out and bundled the cloak then looked up at a still ruffled Regina from beneath her hair. “How do we find -” she swallowed harshly against the name, now that she knew just who he was, the words would not come easily. “How do we find him?”

Regina turned to her, mouth parted slightly, clearly at a loss. Her head began to shake slowly. “I’ve been thinking but - I don’t know.” Full of devastation, she frowned, berating herself for her failure. “I don’t know anything about this place beyond the fact it should have killed both of us already.” Her uninjured hand rose and Emma sat back on her heels to watch the look of pained concentration wash over her features. Her fingers cupped the air and they both warily watched the space above her palm.

After long minutes, Regina let out a gasp and slumped forward in defeat. She clenched the hand a few times then glared at Emma as if the whole situation was her fault.

“And I can’t seem to use my magic.”

“Is that normal?”

“No, it’s not normal!” She exclaimed with hands thrown up into the air. “It feels weak and sick inside of me,” she clutched her chest to make her point. “As though something is trapping it there.” Regina spun on her heel to stare off into the distance. “I should be able to feel him,” she murmured, head shaking, utterly at a loss. “I’ve never had anything stop my magic like this in all the years I’ve lived.”

Curious, Emma latched on to the last statement. “Exactly how old are you?” She shrunk beneath the dark glower the comment earned her and gave an exaggerated shrug. “Sorry, I don’t exactly know any fairies. Is it still rude to ask those questions when you’re all immortal?”

“We fairies are not immortal.” Emma raised her eyebrows and Regina looked away with a twist of her mouth. “We do not age if we do not wish to and without injury we may live forever - but there are many things which can harm us.”

“Iron blades, for example.”

“Yes.” Her head dropped in a sharp nod before she returned that unwavering gaze to Emma. “Or magic.”

Emma struggled to hold that gaze when she saw the depth of pain within it. She ducked her head. Emma knew the gravity of loss well. She had spent a life living among the humans the world tried to forget and had seen that sadness in many pairs of eyes. Brothers lost to sea, families killed in war, children wasted away by illness - she made her own evaluating sweep of the land to stop the train of thought. She had spent that life making certain there was no one who could make her feel the same.

“Okay, so the fairy can’t use magic but can die from it,” Regina rolled her eyes. “How do we find He-” she hesitated again but this time forced herself to push through. If she couldn’t even bare to say his name, what hope did they have of saving him. “Henry.” She cleared her throat and Regina watched her carefully through knowing eyes. “How do we find Henry?”

In the silent moment of thought which followed, a trickle of silver liquid began to creep up behind them. It slithered through the sandy shale, wetting the granules for brief moments before moving on, leaving no discernable trail behind.

Regina spotted it first, taking a large step to put herself between it and the other woman. Emma drew her sword although she was almost certain it would be utterly ineffectual against anything this world put before them. There was still comfort in holding the weapon.

The stream of liquid came to an abrupt stop a few yards from them, where it began to form a pool. Regina glanced back at her, the question in her eyes unmistakable. _Do we run, or stand?_

Emma stared back at her with wide eyes and blinked in the direction of the strange puddle with a raise of brows. _Do we have a choice?_

As the liquid began to slowly rise from the earth, in an effect much like a reverse waterfall, they decided that no, there was no choice for them here. They were being tugged by strings they could not see to cut.

Emma stepped around Regina to stand at the woman’s side. Shoulder to shoulder with the sword held out between them, they readied themselves for the next surprise.

The silver rose and widened until it was as tall as Emma. It shifted once more and they realised it was taking the shape of a person. A few moments later, a silver spectre of a woman stood before them. She wore a thick wraparound travelling cloak and her hair was plaited to rest across one shoulder. Though obscured by the strange substance, Emma was certain that with her sharp jaw and wide eyes, the woman was a great beauty.

“You seek the boy who carries no blade.”  
Regina surged forward at the words, spoken with such indifference. With a quick two step, Emma stood level with her again, forgoing the reflexive eye-roll in favour of reaching a hand to almost touch her arm. They had no idea what this thing was, staying back was their only safe option.

“ _Where is my son_?” The question rumbled out of Regina’s throat like a curse. It carried the weight of a promised destruction, a tearing of limbs and breaking of bones if she was not given her answer. Emma shuddered. “What have the two of you done with him?”

The silver woman tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. She blinked twice, lazy as a cat, then smiled. It was a closed lip smile, full of purity and innocence and it softened her eyes. Emma didn’t trust it one bit.

“They are here with me, safer than yourselves at this minute.” The silver that made up her torso and waist rippled and shifted until it was flat and they could see another image there. Two bodies lay in what appeared to be peaceful slumber, one a grown woman and one a small boy. Regina barely managed to stop her hand from creeping forward to touch his form before the image disappeared again. “But you must hurry if we are to escape.”

“Escape from what?” Emma asked carefully, closely studying the spectre’s face for any sort of clues.

The woman’s gaze is piercing as she looks Emma up and down, eyes lingering on the sharp edge of her sword. “There was a war here which poisoned the life-blood of the land,” the silver form of her body rippled and a flash of pain crossed her face. “It is destroying itself as we speak, look to the sky.”

The three women tilted their heads up as one. Emma was shocked to see that the orange and red curves from before had distorted into jagged cracks which laced the sky like lightning. She looked down to the horizon behind them and let out a gasp of shock. That glow which had painted the world pink earlier was now an angry poisonous red.

“The blue star will mark your path.” She pointed behind her at the untainted sky where a small blue speck could be seen. “You will find us at the First Tree but please make haste -”

“Who are you?” Regina demanded. “Why should we trust you are telling the truth?”

“You have no choice. As for my name, if you must be so crass as to request it, I am Nimue. Follow the blue star and you will find your son. Come in time and you will save him. And yourselves.”

The silver figure collapsed to the ground then hastily slithered away.

Regina stared up at the blue star, her face unreadable.

Emma stepped forward to examine the ground where she had stood. There were no marks in the sand. “Do you think she was telling the truth?”

With a glance back over her shoulder, Regina eyed the shifting red on the horizon hesitantly.

“We have to believe her,” she turned back to Emma, face hardening into something more determined. “What other chance to do we have?” 

\-- 

And so, they walked. Pilgrims beneath the blue star high above their heads in a foreign sky.

Regina strode purposefully in her soft soled boots, jaw tight and shoulders hitched high. Every now and then she would look at her wrapped palm then give a small shake of her head.

The landscape changed slowly from desert to hilly crags and Emma found herself lost in her thoughts. Now that she knew her son was still alive, she had and infinite jumble of questions she wanted answered.

The first fell from her lips without her permission. “Why him?” A hitch in the woman’s stride told her she had heard. “Why did you take him?”

They continued in silence for a moment, Emma increasing her speed until she could peer at Regina’s profile from the corner of her eye. She glanced over for a moment, her mouth opening to speak then she set her jaw again and she stared resolutely forwards. The ambivalence made Emma angry.

“I think you owe me an answer.”

“I owe you nothing,” Regina huffed. The words sparked Emma into action. She shoved at the woman’s shoulder with both hands, the force making her stumble away to try and keep her footing.

“You stole my child from me and you owe me _nothing_?”

Regina was lit up with fury when she turned to face her, hands raised automatically to call her magic and return the attack. Her shoulders slumped when she remembered it would not come.

“If I had not taken him, he would have found his way to me eventually.” She looked over the woman before her, knowing now that Granny’s words had been true the night she first held Henry. A curse is a curse, it cannot be broken.

“That’s -” Emma cut herself off, trying to breathe through her seething rage. “That’s a terrible reason.”

Regina quirked her lips and looked up through a curtain of her hair. “And what do you know of the reason of fairies?”

With an eye-roll, Emma threw up her hands. It was true, after this night of sacrifices, kidnappings and mighty beasts, she understood she knew nothing of their ways. She started walking again, assuming Regina did not wish to give her an answer not spoken in riddles.

“I had no quarrel with you, if that is what you think.”

“Did you have one with Graham?” Emma did not notice her come to an abrupt stop. “He blamed himself to the point where I wondered if it were true.”

“You know Graham?” She hurried to catch up.

“Do you?” Her brow furrowed. “The Graham I know hunts with a wolf. It was his cabin you stole Henry from.”

Regina let out a breathy laugh. “All these years I looked for him…”

Emma turned back to her. “You _do_ know him?”

“Yes. He was my Huntsman.”

“Graham sacrificed humans for your tithe?”

“He never enjoyed it, dear, but it was his duty and he would not shirk it.” She narrowed her eyes at Emma, finally putting together all of the pieces of this puzzle. “He did not return for the tithe after Henry was born. Now I know why. He must have thought I took him as punishment.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

Eyes on the clear horizon before them, they resumed a steady pace. The blue star shone brightly above, noticeably larger now than when they had begun.

“Is he happy?” Emma could not help but break the silence once more.

Regina hesitated, her face falling into an indecipherable array of emotion before hardening once more. “Of course he is.”

“Are you sure?”

“One cannot be eternally happy, Emma Swan. Surely this is a fact you are aware of.” 

\-- 

_Emma had never been so happy._

_For almost four years now she had been a member of Hood’s inner circle. She had found her place in the world, stealing from the nobles in Mist Haven and redistributing much of their wealth to the city folk who were hungry from the almost perpetual drought which plagued their land. She had earned her place there through a series of well planned thefts and an audacious introduction which was still spoken about._

_After collecting the proceeds of her work, she had snuck her way into Hood’s own bed-chamber to prove her skills and ask for work. Upon waking, his wife Marian had been unable to cease her laughter and Hood had eventually smiled also. The name ‘Swan’ was now spoken with a certain kind of admiration among the Merry Men._

_And now she had met a man who made her smile just like Hood when he looked upon his wife. His name was Neal and he was a thief from another city, come to Mist Haven after his own home became too dangerous for him to work._

_He once stole a horse and rode it through the temple of the Sun Lord, just to make her laugh. He was good at making her laugh._

_They had a job planned together which would bring them enough coin to purchase a small house to live in. They were making a real life together, where they would no longer run with the dregs of the city and Emma was happy._

_Their job would not be an easy one. The Emerald Guard were in possession of a magical talisman which Neal had found a buyer for. It was a necklace of green and gold and they would find it in the heart of the Guard’s compound, in the offices of their leader the Witch Catcher, Zelena._

_Difficult or no, Emma trusted her skills and Neal’s ability and above all trusted this weightless feeling of hope for their future._

_When they were caught in the act, that hope curdled into fear. She tried to keep up with Neal as they ran from the shouting guards. Through the dead streets of nighttime Markettown, they made their way towards the Sump and their escape._

_A green rope of light wrapped itself around Emma’s middle and she was pulled up short. She reached her arms out for Neal, cried for his help but he had stopped in the middle of the street. He clutched something in his hand and whispered some words. A cloud of grey smoke formed from nowhere to snake around his body._ _  
_ _He smiled at her, regret painting his features and then he was gone._

_Along with Emma’s hope. And her happiness._

_She was given a second thief’s mark and sentenced to two seasons in the castle dungeons. Zelena had been lenient on the condition that Emma would come to work for her at the end of the time. “It will be good work,” she promised. “Well paid because I could use your talents.”_

_Emma had no intention of being bound to anyone again._

_By the time she realised a babe was growing in her belly, she had lost most of her will to live._  

\-- 

“How long do you think we’ve been walking?” Emma swiped a sleeve across her forehead out of habit but there was no need. She didn’t seem to get tired in this world.

“Time is strange here, I don’t think we will know until we return.”

"Are you finding it hard to breathe?" The air here sat heavy in her lungs. Emma glanced back at the red streaked sky, cringing at how it now looked like a cracked bowl, lightning shapes cutting through the blue. The distance between it and them had begun to shrink.

"No," Regina groused under her breath, frustrated at her own weakness. "I'm finding it hard to move."

"What?" Emma turned on her heel and carefully appraised the state her companion was in. It was true she was breathing normally but her movements were sluggish and unlike her own, there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She half reached out a hand to check the woman’s temperature before remembering how well her touch had been received the last time.

"I'm perfectly fine," Regina ground out, ignoring the aborted gesture and shifting her shoulders in a way which suggested she was anything but fine. "Though we may need to slow our pace soon,” she added imperiously. “I'm not used to walking so far."

Emma frowned at the woman's back as she stepped on ahead. This didn't have anything to do with being a lily-footed Queen. Something was wrong. The graceful, imposing creature who had held the fairy folk in awe mere hours ago, now walked like the knot-knuckled and hunched elderly beggars from the Sump.

Nothing could account for such a rapid change. _Except_ , the voice in her head whispered just as her eyes fell on Regina's bandaged hand and watched the way she held it away from her body. _Don't you normally nurse a hurt paw? She looks like she's afraid of it._

"Wait," Emma called, covering the distance between them in a few easy strides. "Let me see your hand."

Regina tore away from her in a fury, pulling the wrapped hand close to her body but still not close enough to touch. "If you for one moment consider -"

Emma raised her hands in surrender at the fierce snarl, eyes going wide at the disproportionate reaction. "I just wanted to make sure it was okay." She dipped her head in apology, hoping Regina would see reason. "That thing's tail could have been poisoned, we don't know anything about the beasts here." She watched carefully as the woman's breathing slowly returned to something close to normal.

The hand in question dropped away from her body again, exposing the knot of fabric at the centre of her palm. Emma could almost be certain that something was pushing at the bandage from underneath. If the skin was that swollen - her eyes flicked to check the fingers but they looked normal. There was no marking on the skin that would indicate blood turned bad - she really needed to look at the wound in case something was wrong with it.

"If you're no good, I won't know what to do to when we find Henry." Regina flinched at the sound of his name. "What if that Nimue has some weird fairy ritual we have to perform to get out of here? I'm running blind and I’ll need your help when we get to the tree."

Regina’s face twisted in distaste but she slowed down and stopped. With a huff she held out her hand to Emma who took it gingerly in her own.

"There was a tale I was told as a child, one of this world." Emma began to slowly work at the knot, briefly catching the woman's eyes to indicate she had her attention. "Once, a human prince and a young fairy princess met on a moonless night and lay together, returning to their own kingdoms before first light. When the season changed and she found she was carrying his child, she returned to him but he was betrothed to a great human beauty and swore before his council that it could not be so."

"Sounds like a few men I’ve met," Emma muttered as she gently parted the two sides of the bandage. She raised her eyebrows and shot Regina a sly smile. "Quick to sow their seeds but slower than anything to harvest."

"Are always been this bad at listening or are you favouring me with special treatment?" Emma sighed and focussed back on her task, trying not to let her annoyance show in her movements. "To skip the politics, as I'm sure you would simply ignore the details anyway," Emma rolled her eyes. "The princess was disowned and, maddened, kidnapped the prince and took them through a portal to a place where neither of their families would think to look -"

"Don't tell me -"

“ _Beyond The Veil_ ." Regina's voice rose pointedly. "With his first breath of the air, the human prince fell. Unable, and possibly unwilling, to help she watched his body turn to dust as her contractions began. The child was born and he was well. But," and at the change in her tone, to something darkly conspiratorial, Emma looked back at her with wide eyes, her movements stilling. _Had she told Henry stories like this when he was a boy, curled up under blankets during a storm?_

"She had forgotten that setting foot in this world also meant death to fairies. Her skin began to boil and burst and harden. Her screams called forth the inhabitants of the land. Her rent and broken body was stone by the time they came to surround her and the bairn's wails were bubbling into the air. They waited for it to die but it did not."

At Emma's curious look, she lowered her voice to a whisper and made a play of looking over her shoulder for any eavesdropping parties.

"You see, a land as old as this," she took in the strange landscape once more with a sweep of her eyes. "Is more alive than all the trees of a forest. The land beyond The Veil had decided upon the birth of this child, sharing the blood of two worlds and being born within a third, that any child of mixed blood, should they so find their way, would have eternal sanctuary within this world."

Eyes still locked, Emma unwrapped the last turn of bandage. Something about the words had sunk deep and warm into her chest and she could feel her heart clench tightly. There were truths being spoken here, truths which felt almost personal to her.

Regina too, found herself mesmerised. Lost in the gaze of a creature right out of her childhood myths - a child not fairy, not human but _both_ . For she must be, to have survived more than a moment in this world. A child, a _woman,_ who should have belonged to her thanks to her curse. And instead gave birth to the person who had lit the dormant spark in her heart and made her feel alive again.

What would this moment now be, if she had claimed Emma at her birth instead of Henry? Would the woman still be at her side, some strange ally on this quest to find the son they both claim as their own? Or would Henry never have been born.

"And that is why you must have fairy blood in you. Because you breathe out the stuff which would kill a human," they both looked down at the newly uncovered palm and Emma gasped in shock. "And I am slowly turning to stone."

The wound looked unlike any Emma had ever seen. There was no blood, although a sickly green sap-like substance was present at the edges. Within this, granules had gathered at three points, forming into lumpy snowflake shapes. One of these had begun to expand outwards. And upwards. It looked like -

"Crystal." Emma ran a gentle finger over the natural point of the tallest piece, marvelling at the smooth texture. She looked for Regina's eyes, face full of horror as she pressed harder and felt resistance from the base of the stone. "You're growing crystals."

Regina’s eyes were grim as they followed Emma’s movements. “Yes,” she murmured. “It seems our tales of this world were not exact.”

\--

_Myths are not always based in fact but it was true that the land beyond The Veil was safe for those of mixed human and fairy blood._

_In an older time when magic was everywhere, out in the open and not hidden or feared, a set of mixed blood twins made a portal and crossed The Veil. The inhabitants of this world, used to unexpected happenings, welcomed the sisters without thought._

_The shorter of the two, Marian, began to fit in with ease, not at all upset by the fact that her magic did not work here. She met a great archer who favoured a hooded cloak and he taught her his trade. Before long, they were in love._

_The taller sister, Nimue, also fell in love but her feelings were not returned. She had fallen for the original halfblood, with his broad shoulders and kind, knowing eyes. Merlin was loved by many but only had eyes for his spells. Watching him from afar, soon she too was utterly enamoured with the power he could wield._

_She began to seek out teachers wherever she could. Began to learn how to use her magic again, even in this world. The woman spent all of her waking hours practicing her spells and travelling to new tutors._

_Until finally, the one she had loved, came to notice her._

_By the time he had come to love her, she was no longer interested in anything but his power._

_And her attempts to take it would rip the old world apart._

\--

What had at first appeared as a crack on the horizon had now revealed itself to be a deep chasm rent through the plain as far as the eye could see. Wider than six wagons, it would be impossible to cross without aid.

That aid had been provided for them by a pair of tall stone towers, carved into opposite edges of the cliff. Standing like needles thrust into the earth by giants, high up their length they were connected by a thin bridge. Emma had only seen buildings that tall at the Mist Haven palace. It made her dizzy to look up at the platform connecting them, so high that a city could fit comfortably beneath.

“They couldn’t have just put the bridge on the ground?” Regina was using a hand to shadow her eyes as she too assessed the roughly cut towers. “Who the hell builds giant rock towers in the middle of nowhere, anyway?”

“Maybe this wasn’t always the middle of nowhere.” Emma watched as she brushed her thumb against a set of circular runes on a marking stone at her feet. “Maybe there’s a reason the bridge is up so high.” Regina turned back to her with a raised eyebrow. “Even though it’s gone now, there _was_ magic here once.” She gestured at the writing on the stone. “This could have been a border marking or a warning to travellers.”

“This whole place needs a warning sign,” Emma mumbled, earning a quirk of the lips from Regina which the woman tried to hide by facing the first tower.

“There’s an entrance,” she pointed at a dark opening on ground level then lifted her arm to gesture at several rough outcroppings a few yards up the rockface. “And those seem to be a set of stairs.” The jutting stones spiralled up for two turns before entering the tower through another small opening. This pattern was repeated up the length of the tower, high into the sky. Emma gulped, her palms sweating immediately at the thought of making the climb.

“ _Stairs,”_ she exhaled in disbelief, eying the mammoth fissure in the earth. “Can we just try our luck and make the jump?” Regina let out a sudden peal of laughter and Emma had to duck her head to hide her grin.

“Not afraid of heights are you, Swan?”

“Only as much as the next person who doesn’t want to fall to their death.” Regina hummed, took two determined steps forward, then swiftly turned back to Emma. She held out a hand.

“Your sword.”

Emma glanced down at it, fingers automatically coming to hover over the pommel. “Yes it is.” Regina rolled her eyes and bounced her hand in the air. The action reminded Emma of a child stamping their foot and she had to tamp down on a smirk.

“Give me your sword.”

Emma scratched tapped the hilt, swaying back on her heels as if she had all the time in the world. She shrugged. “What do you want it for?”

“Oh for -” Regina surged forward, her patience lost. Emma hadn’t expected her to react so quickly and with a moment of fumbling and an indignant cry, she lost the blade to the woman. Emma pouted.

“It’s really impolite to grab at somebody’s sword. Now I know where Henry gets his bad habits.”

Regina froze, the sword tip already cutting through the material of her dress a handwidth above her knee. She forced herself to take one breath, then another. With a swift movement she pushed down on the sword and the skirt of her dress severed down to the hem. It only took a few more slices before she could tear a length of fabric clean off, leaving her with a much shorter, diagonal skirt which would allow for easier climbing.

Emma winced at the clatter as her sword was thrown to the ground but refrained from making another comment as Regina stalked towards the tower.

She hadn’t meant to be sound cruel - but she had nonetheless. Retrieving the sword, she frowned at her own stupidity. It slid easily back into its sheath and she tried not to watch the way Regina’s stride had lengthened now that she was free of the long skirt.  

_Just follow the blue star,_ she reminded herself. _Just get Henry safe and back home, then you can forget this mess._

She waited until Regina had made a few turns of the tower before following, her shoulders stiff and her head hung low. 

\--

The growing ache in her legs was the only way Regina could tell how long she had been climbing. The stairs had been surprisingly easy to navigate, even with her wrapped hand, as a chain rail poked out from the wall at intervals.

Finally at the top of the tower, she paused for a moment to stare out at the world. On the other side of the ravine there were blocky shapes of what could have once been dwellings, scattered between a hardy purple brush. Beyond that was another set of rock formations, larger than the ones they had passed before.

And above it all, the unwavering blue star.

She looked down. Could that be the tree in the distance? Their destination finally in sight?

_Yes,_ she thought, lowering her eyes to her feet. _First though, the bridge._

Regina took a deep breath then stepped out on the ledge. A gust of wind almost threw her off immediately but she clung to the edge of the doorway. The last few turns of the stairs had been inside the tower and the strength of the wind had crept up on her.

This was not going to be easy.  

Her second step out onto the thin stone bridge was more stable. The wind would not be so much of a problem now that she was aware of it and could compensate. Her body leaned into it and her head stayed low.

_One step in front of the other. Simple._

Half way across the bridge, she heard them. Wailing voices all around her. Her head shot up and she gasped in shock. Spectres were floating all around her, filling the air on either side of the bridge. They did not seem to come near the stone.

Ghostly creatures of all kinds fluttered in the wind, their forms not solid enough to stop light from filtering through their form. She shifted back to look at the opening in the opposite tower. If she just walked, stayed within the edges of the stone, she was almost certain they couldn’t touch her.

She shuffled forward another step, it was easy. Two more steps took her past the middle and she began to feel more confident now that she was almost there.

_“Regina.”_

The voice shot through her like an arrow and she slipped, falling to one knee so as to not plummet to her death. _That voice._ Her uninjured hand clutched her throat as if trying to free her airways but there was nothing there to block them. She shut her eyes for a long moment then drew a deep breath through her nose and stood up.

She turned her head and when she opened her eyes finally, there he was.

_“Daniel.”_

A whole lifetime had passed and still it felt like only yesterday that she had lost him.

She clutched her heart. His childlike smirk was exactly the same as she remembered it.

“Regina,” he smiled at her and held out a hand to her through the air. “Come, be with me.”

She hung her head and let out a sob. “Oh, Daniel.” His face blurred beneath her tears. “I’ve missed you.”

He tilted his head a her and floated closer, his hair flopping about in the wind. “It’s caused you so much pain, Regina.” _Yes,_ she thought, blinking against the tears. _It has._ “You belong at my side,” his smile brightened and his hand reached out for hers. “We can finally be happy.”

Her hand had begun to stretch towards his before she could stop to think about his words. Happy. She had never in her wildest dreams believed she would find happiness after Daniel.

But then the impulsive curse she had laid upon an innocent girl in revenge had come to term. And there had been a helpless little babe in her arms who needed her for everything. _Henry_. He had grown to be a rascal, teasing all the pixies and dancing with the hobgoblins. And she had remembered how to laugh.

She looked closely at the figure of the man she had loved with all of her being. And she could see cracks there. A speck of insanity at the edge of his kind eyes, fingers twisted like claws where once his hands had been large and gentle. This was not her Daniel.

“Regina?”

The question was voiced warily from the other end of the bridge. Over her shoulder she could see Emma clutching the doorway, fear evident on her open face.

She turned back to the non-Daniel.

“I cannot go with you.” Even knowing the ghost was not her Daniel, she could not help but speak to him as if he were. “I must choose the living,” the thought of Henry’s smiling face filled her mind and a single tear leaked out of her eye. “Over the lost.”

She lowered her still outstretched hand and Emma breathed a sigh of relief.

The apparitions took their leave at the rejection and the wind which had hampered Regina’s journey disappeared. She took the last few steps as if she were walking on air then turned and burst out in laughter at the sight of Emma crawling across the bridge.

The woman looked up with a weak smile of her own. “I really don’t like heights.”

\--

When the reached the ground, Emma wanted to kiss it. _I really hope we don’t have to do that again to get out of here._

Regina was standing with her back to Emma, her hands clutching her stomach protectively. Whatever she had interrupted on the bridge between the woman and ghost, Regina had brought it with her.

“Who was -”

“Don’t,” she was cut off by a haggard voice, one clearly trying to stave off tears. The woman turned and Emma was struck by how vulnerable she looked with her pinched brow, downcast eyes and weak grimace. Emma tried for an conciliatory smile.

“Alright, how about an easy one first?” She waited until Regina took a breath and nodded, then tried again, stepping up to take the lead this time. “You said your people, the fairies _,_ ” she shook her head at how the world she had known so well had changed so rapidly. “You said you have stories of this place?” Regina kept walking, waiting for the real question. “Do you know anything of this war Nimue spoke of?”

She considered the question, rubbing at her arms.

“We have many stories.” She fell into step beside Emma. “This world, the land beyond The Veil, is where most of your Gods were born.” She turned to Emma who had drawn closer to not miss a word. “It existed before the fairies, eons before humans were a seed in The Mother’s eye.”

Emma frowned, struggling to follow what she was saying when so much of this was new to her. “The Mother?” Regina let out a bitter laugh.

“She created the first humans, she was very powerful. You have long since forgotten her from your histories though. She, well,” Regina shot Emma a look out the side of her eyes. “You might say _‘died’_ , when the last human let go of their belief of her.”

“How would that kill a God?”

“Sometimes a God gives power to the land,” she tried to explain. “Sometimes they take their power from it. Some others sit in between. The old fairies kept our world spinning, they tilled the land before the humans did and you worshipped them for it. You did not understand the fairies, so when you explained them away as magic; they began to...develop it.”

“But -”

“Magic is a fickle thing. When the veil folk, The Mother included, sought refuge from their war in our world, the humans began to worship them as they had the fairies. You see, there are certain beliefs inherent to all humans. The sun must rise every day. The moon must be its placeholder to light the night. The rivers must run to the seas. The earth must be fruitful. The winds are untamable. The fire must be feared.

“Humans…” she petered off, smiling at the oddity of it. “You are strange creatures.”

Emma laughed. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that made any sense.”

Regina nodded to her. “Yes, but listen, if you want to learn. When you were presented with new, more powerful beings, you immediately began to connect them to those truths.”

“How so?” She could at least pretend to understand.

The woman scrunched up her face into a frown, struggling to find the words to convey something she had understood from the age of a child. “You, _projected_ the belief that, for instance, ‘the sun must rise’, onto one of the veil folk. He took up the mantle of Sun Lord and now when you pray to the sun, or to him, you make his power grow. He is most powerful in the day, when the sun in high and you all turn your heads to him.The Summer Solstice is when he has his most magic.”

“So we invented our own Gods?”

“No,” Regina shook her head, rubbing her temples. “You already believed in the sun, and all of that belief had made a magic - belief is a powerful thing, Emma.” The woman nodded, she did understand that part, sort of. “Magic like that is...ambient. It can exist by itself, be as light as a breeze or ferocious as a howling storm. When the veil folk came, you humans with your small minds -”

“ _Hey!_ ” Regina smirked at the predictable outburst.

“When the humans met the veil folk, they felt them to be connected to their core beliefs. That magic offered itself to them if they chose to be its vassal. So now when you pray to the sun, Rumpelstiltskin, receives the power, the magic of your belief.

“So to answer your question, all that I know of the war which brought the veil folk to our world is that it was dreadful enough they felt compelled to leave their old identities behind. Whether to it was to forget or to protect themselves, we can only guess.”

Emma had not stopped thinking about the strange ways of magic and Gods. “And you?” Emma tilted her head, it felt heavy now that it was full of all these new ideas. “Do you get power from human prayer too?”

“Yes.” Her head rose imperiously at the reminder of her position and her responsibilities. “I am the Harvest Queen. I tend to the land and to the crops.”

“Does that mean we can blame you for all the bad seasons then?”

“In a way,” she growled, annoyed. “Sometimes I am otherwise preoccupied.”

“The drought that started when I was a kid,” Emma thought back to the hungry streetfolk she had helped feed while in Hood’s court. “Was that -?”

“I was still relatively new to the position then but yes, the land often reflects my emotions.”

Emma stopped dead as another thought hit her. “That drought ended almost ten years ago. Right after…” Regina caught her eyes with a piercing gaze, not liking that she had shared so much of herself.

“Right after I took Henry from you.” Emma returned her gaze head on. There was so much more to this woman than she let herself show.

“He made you happy.”

“He is my son,” she replied, as if that explained everything.

\--

_“Why do I still have special meals?” Henry asked her across the banquet table at Summer Solstice. “I’ve lived for almost ten years, I’m not the little boy who once choked on an apple anymore.”_

_Regina froze, a deer caught in the sights of a hunter. She hadn’t feared him asking this question for most of those years. Since he was still crawling and had seemed to fit in so well among the fairy folk. Now she was unprepared and Henry was opening his mouth again._

_“The only others who eat this food are Hansel, Gretel and the other changeling children.” She swallowed dryly, his eyes not missing a beat. “Am I one of them?”_

_“Henry…” she began carefully but he pushed away from the table, his chair and plate flying in different directions._

_“I_ knew _it,” he spat the words triumphantly, arms rigid at his sides as he leant his head towards her. “You’re not my_ real _mother, what did you do to her?”_

_The words struck a harder blow to her than she might have imagined. It was an accusation she could only deny in part and if this was more than a childish tantrum, what could she say? If Henry truly believed her to not be his mother, then how could she claim him as her son._

_She stood up and tried to coax him away from the feast and its many listening ears with an arm around his shoulder. He skipped away from her touch and her fingers turned to ice. She drew them back to her body, rubbed one hand over the other in circular motions. She had once feared Cora’s touch in the same way. Had she hurt her son, pushed him away by failing to share this truth?_

_“Yes you were a changeling babe.” His eyes widened at her confirmation of the fact. It would do no good to hide it from him now that he had guessed. “And I did nothing to hurt the woman who gave birth to you.” She prayed that he would believe her._

_“Then where is she? Can we find her?”_

_Regina sighed. She could feel trouble brewing in the way Henry stood poised to jump into action with over-excited eyes._

_“I’m afraid not, Henry,” she truly was sorry. Perhaps if she could take him to the broken girl who had given birth to him - could explain the years of events which led up to that moment - he might understand_ why _and they could go back to their lives. But who knew where or who she was now. Who knew if Henry would believe her. “She is protected by magic which prevents me from being able to find her.”_

_Henry stared at her in disbelief. “Liar,” he spat, then turned on his heel and ran off to climb the apple tree which had poisoned him as a child, sullenly dropping half rotten fruit into the stream beyond its roots. Regina felt her throat close up._

_“I could find her for you, Your Majesty.” She turned to the bright eyed wolf-girl who had come to stand silently behind her shoulder. Regina flashed her a disheartened smile._

_“Thank you, Red,” she cleared her throat quietly. “But I’m hoping he will let it go in a few days.” She avoided the raised eyebrow Granny shot her from across the table. “Besides, it would hardly change his mind to see you drag her here and I don’t see how you could convince her to come with you otherwise.”_

_“People can surprise you,” came Granny’s rough grunt from behind Red. They younger women rolled their eyes at each other like they had when they were girls._

_“Not this time, Granny,” Regina muttered gravely under her breath. “I don’t trust the daughter of Snow White to not betray me as her mother did.”_  

\--

Emma had been walking backwards to stare at the new, larger red cracks in the sky when the ground disappeared from beneath her. She choked off a cry as she fell forward, pushing off the ground with her forearms in a panic to lever herself free. Regina was at her side by the time she lay panting on her back, staring at the hole she had almost fallen through.

Regina leaned forward to inspect it, careful to stay far enough away so that the edges kept from crumbling further. Inside the hole was a great blackness, a limitless depth which would surely have swallowed Emma whole if she had not found purchase.

“There’s nothing down there.” Emma was back on her feet but refused to step as close to the hole as Regina.

“You were lucky,” Regina confirmed.

She turned again to once more continue their journey. Only three steps later, she too felt the earth crumble beneath her and barely avoided falling.

“It’s like thin ice,” Emma murmured, half afraid her words would be enough to bring the earth down beneath them both. Regina scanned the ground in front of them carefully, scowling at this new obstacle.

“I think once we get to those stones we should be safe,” she gestured at the half circle of rounded stones several paces ahead. The ground there had a mossy substance on it, which she hoped would need stable ground to grow on. Emma was already nodding at her.

”We should split up.” Her heart had begun beating faster at the thought of the task ahead. “Walk carefully; test the ground.”

Emma slid her left foot forward in demonstration, away from the other woman. Her toe tapped on the ground a few times before she pressed down with her heel. She swivelled the foot and pressed off with her other, letting it land gently several inches to the side.

Repeating the process, she accidentally pushed too hard with her back foot and almost lost her balance. With an awkward wobble, she found it again, feet once more safely on the ground.

She smiled and looked over her shoulder at Regina who had not yet made a move. “See? We’ll be through it in no time.”

Regina watched the smile turned to a look of shock as the woman once more dropped through the earth. Her arms shot out to catch solid ground and she clung to the side of the hole. Her body wriggled but she could not find enough purchase to pull herself up. Regina almost leapt to her aid before remembering she would likely find the same fate.

This time the hole was easily wide enough to fit two humans.

Emma looked at her with scared eyes.

“Okay,” she puffed, once more trying to push her body forward. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Don’t move,” Regina commanded, eyeing the earth between them. “Just hold on.”

Upon closer inspection there seemed to be a mottled pattern through the grey earth. The piece Regina stood on was a darker shade than some of the others around her. With one more glance in Emma’s direction, she took a chance and stepped onto another dark grey section. It held.

“What are you doing?” With her second step, Emma had realised she was making her way towards her. “Don’t be stupid, Regina, what happens to Henry when we both fall?”

Regina squared her jaw and kept walking, ignoring the woman. There was only one patch of dark grey near enough to Emma to be able to reach her. She had to make a jump for it. Her face scowled with determination as she readied herself. Her leap took her too far, almost to the edge of the safe ground but she dropped hard onto her knees and managed to saved herself. Some of the ground to her right had crumbled away but she refused to look at it.

“Give me your hand,” she reached out her own delicate fingers, her face determined.

“You shouldn’t,” Emma said quietly but gave no other objection.

She shifted her weight onto her left side and stretched out her right hand until their fingers could slip into each other. Regina leaned closer and changed her grip so that she could grab onto the underside of Emma’s wrist.

Emma copied her and marveled at how strong the hold was. They locked eyes and Regina shifted her weight.

“Now.”

With one giant heave Regina slid backwards, pulling at Emma as she tried to push herself up. For one terrifying moment, Emma was afraid they weren’t going to make it but then she was free. Sliding forward away from the edge as it continued to crumble under her weight. And into the safety of Regina’s arms.

They froze for a moment, arms still linked and Emma resting half on the velvet which barely covered Regina’s lap. Emma shot up, turning to stare at the hole which had almost sent her to her death. She had to fight hard against the blush rising on her cheeks.

“You should have left me,” she shook her head, trying to get her heart to stop pounding. “Gone on to the tree by yourself.”

Regina stood up, brushing the dirt from her legs. She smiled.

“And what if I have to sacrifice you to save Henry?” Emma grinned back at her, feeling wild with adrenaline. “This was just a good business decision.”

Carefully they made their way across the dark grey earth together, keeping close this time, in case one needed to catch the other.

Once they passed the stones, Emma sighed with relief.

“I really hate this place.”

“On that, I will agree,” Regina picked up her pace, not looking back and Emma had to rush to catch up. “I certainly won’t be suggesting anyone come to visit.” 

\-- 

They paused on a hill to catch their breath.

They were almost there. The blue star had grown in the sky until it looked to be the size of Henry’s wooden ball. The First Tree was a monolith beneath it, with branches stretching easily as wide as a small town. None of the ancient trees in the Darkwood could compete with it in size.

_Soon,_ Regina thought to herself, feeling a sense of elation that they had beaten the approaching red cracks on the horizon which now stretched across half the sky. It was close, but they would make it. They would save him.

She looked back at Emma, unable to hide the fiercely hopeful glow in her eyes. Somehow they had made it. They would find Henry and escape this wretched place.

Emma smiled at her, feeling the same elation. Something had changed in her during her time in this place. Her eyes had been opened to so many new things. Mist Haven would be boring now, with it’s Emerald Guard wiping out more magic users every day.

And she would almost miss this grumbly Fairy Queen. Always on her high-horse but still willing to laugh when things got hard. _Maybe I can visit Henry and her in the Darkwood,_ the thought warmed her blood. _She loves him, that much is clear and he must love her back - you don’t beg for help from someone you don’t think will listen._ She shook her head at herself as another thought popped into her head. _Maybe there would be a place for me in her Guards._

Regina stared at her curiously, opening her mouth to suggest they finish the journey, when she felt a tingle run up her spine and her head snapped up and away to look at the sky. She barely breathed, every muscle thrumming in anticipation while her eyes flittered about.

Emma shook herself, immediately ready for a fight. She opened her senses once more to their surroundings, chastising herself for allowing them to be distracted by this woman, however momentarily. The point of her now drawn sword rose to her favoured guard position as she spun around to place her back against Regina's, protecting them from behind.

Then she waited.

"What is it?" She whispered over her shoulder after a moment, failing to identify any danger. Was there some creature she was deaf and blind to in this world? Had Regina seen something she was physically unable to with her fairy eyes? That thought carried with it a bubbling fear which came to reside low in her gut. She gritted her teeth against the sensation, knowing that if she were to survive facing an invisible beast, she had best ignore everything else.

"Can you not feel it?" She turned back to face Regina, eyes narrowing almost painfully in confusion. The tone the woman spoke with was not one of horror, or worry, or panic, as the appearance of an adversary should warrant.

It was that of wonder.

Emma felt her eyes widen in a wonder of her own as Regina turned to her, the beginnings of a smile pulling at the edges of her so often scowling lips. It held a childlike quality, as though she were in anticipation of the moment when rules were allowed to be broken.

Emma swallowed against a suddenly all too dry throat. That smile was beautiful.

"What is it?" She asked again, only partly surprised at the raw edge her voice had taken on. But she could feel it now; the shift in the air, the anticipation of the earth. Her eyes raised to the sky at the same moment the rain clouds raced over the horizon.

"I didn't think rain was born until our world."

Dark grey roiling thunderheads spouted lightning across the hilly landscape before them. Clouds tumbled over each other like kittens racing. Emma was momentarily reminded of her time stuck at sea with pirates. Captain Milah would have reverently bestowed this monster of a storm with the name, 'Ship Killer'.

And it was approaching with greater speed than any storm in their world could muster.

She returned her blade to its sheath and craned her neck to try for a better view, her eyes shrunk against the icy winds which had already reached them ahead of the clouds. Something about the shape of the storm was off. Instead of a mostly flat base, she watched as spikes of cloud dipped down towards the ground every so often. There was a strange rhythm to it. A beat. Cold fear dripped down her spine and she grabbed a hold of Regina’s uninjured hand as she turned to run.

"It's - " _it can't be._ She had heard of these great beasts. Emma pulled Regina along behind her, unwilling to let go or explain until they found cover. If there even was cover that could protect them from this. Perhaps the tree but they were too far to find refuge there.

Furious at being handled like a ragdoll, Regina looked behind them, determined to understand what about a little rain had so frightened the other woman. The storm had halved the distance to them in the bare moments since it slid into view and now she was able to see clearly what had spurred Emma into action.

" _Dragons,_ " she cried out in disbelief, the roar of the storm they were bringing already too loud in the air for normal speech to be heard. She pushed Emma's hand away and picked up her pace, joining her in the search for a safe cove.

Three more steps and Emma swerved away from Regina, hoping the woman would follow as she headed for one of the more rocky mounds down the hill. She disappeared from sight behind the first edge which angled upwards and away from the storm to form a partial overhang. It might just save them. Changing direction only a hair later, the preceding rain like substance reached Regina before she could take shelter.

Her scream pierced even the thunder of this great storm.

Pain tore through her back and she stumbled in the ripples of gathered moss and silt, mind reeling with a mess of impulses - _keep moving - not safe - it burns - get to Emma - Henry -_ and then Emma, wrapped beneath the protection of her cloak, reached out and pulled her behind the rocks.

She cried out as her bleeding back was pressed against the stone but was quickly silenced by a hand across her mouth and a soft body pressed to her front.

"Shh," Emma whispered gently in her ear. "I really don't want to see what damage they could do if they were interested in us."

Regina shivered against the pain and the cold, the staccato rise and fall of Emma's chest against her own a welcome distraction, even if only for a moment. The first sob took them both by surprise, wet and gasping against the hand still pressed to her lips.

"Henry," she murmured thickly against the hand as her fear finally overcame the walls she had locked it behind when he had first been stolen. Her volume rose as her panic grew. "We were so close, he won’t survive this. We can't - we won’t -”

"Shhh," Emma repeated, pulling her head back and shaking the hood off to try and catch Regina's wild eyes. "He can." She slid her hand down, fingers brushing a cold cheek before dropping to rest on Regina’s shoulder under the curtain of dark hair. She tried again with more determination. "We _will."_

Emma could feel the tendrils of fear rising from Regina's skin like smoke. They snaked across her own flesh, making her shiver as they tried their best to bring her under their hold. She squeezed her eyes shut against the intrusion and pressed forward, her brow coming to lean against the clammy one mere inches away. Regina's eyes snapped up in shock.

"Please don't disappear on me," her voice was shaky and her clenched hands scraped at the rough surface of the rock behind Regina as if the pain of it were the only thing keeping her steady. "I need you here right now because I promised him I'd take him to his mother." Regina swallowed thickly and her eyes darted away in shame. "That’s you,” Emma struggled to clear her throat and for a moment Regina was too shocked to look back. “And I don’t like breaking promises."

Dark eyes returned to study this woman pressed too close to really see. Her eyes were shut so tight her face had taken on the appearance of a statue, each line of her expression carved and deep.

A broken promise was what had brought them to this moment.

It was that which had shaped this woman, the other mother of her son, into the companion who had helped keep her steady through this quest. Who bound her wound and kept her mind from listing the many ways this whole thing could go wrong. Once again Regina found herself wondering whether if, in another version of this moment, she were alone and paralyzed with fear rather than partnered and protected by this woman.

Bright eyes opened and Emma's head jerked back in shock as fingers wrapped gently around her fist. They drew her hand away from the wall, gently brushing grit away from now raw knuckles with a delicate thumb. Regina studied the fragile human skin - _mostly human,_ she reminded herself - until she was satisfied that there was no more dirt near the self inflicted wounds.

She looked up through long lashes frowning in thought while words struggled to form in the back of her mind.

"Your hands are important," she began, blinking in distaste at the inadequacy of the statement. She licked her lips and tried again with a small shake of her head. "I mean to say," she squeezed the hand gently, shifting uncomfortably against the stone behind her. "I need you here too." Emma took a steadying breath against the emotion the words caused to rise within her, unable to keep from swaying towards the woman in relief. "And I would prefer it if you were whole."

Their eyes met in the dim light of the waning storm. Neither woman was familiar with this feeling - this _need_ to have someone standing at their side. To keep them safe as they would themselves. Emma's gaze dropped to the parted lips before her.

"One of us needs to be - " as Regina choked out the words, Emma’s eyes snapped up from where they had come to focus on blood red lips. Dark eyes rolled back into her head and Regina’s body went slack.

Emma braced herself just in time to stop the woman from sliding down the rocks. Taking her slight frame easily into her arms, she lowered the limp body to the ground as gently as she could. Quickly removing her cloak, barely noticing the pockmarks which now marred the fabric as she laid it down, she rolled Regina over onto her side.

In the wake of the dragons’ storm, the quiet air was broken once again by a string of curses which would have impressed the dirtiest gutter rats of the Sump.

"You stupid - " Emma's throat closed around the statement and she fell to her knees, hands hovering over the broken fabric of Regina's dress, too afraid to let her fingers make contact.

At least two dozen puncture wounds were scattered across the woman's back, covering the distance between her neck and thighs. And out of each one had grown a new crystal.

\--

_The older orphans had been taken to the slavers in the dead of night. Shackled into a string like horses and knocked down by a baton to the head if they dared fight. Thrown into to a basement room somewhere on the edge of the forest, Emma assumed the men would return at dawn and from the small barred window above her head, she judged that time to be close._

_Lily was curled up at her side, her face pressed against her shoulder. The girls had been delivered to the orphanage days apart and had been near inseparable since. Now Emma slung an arm around her waist, her mind running a million miles a minute. There had to be a way out of this mess._

_The boys were thinking along the same lines, whispering their plans for escape. When the door opened, they would be waiting on either side of it. One boy would dive at the first slaver’s ankles, toppling him to the ground so that another boy could disarm him of his baton. The others would rush the second guard to keep him occupied enough for the armed boy to deal out a painfully low blow._

_Emma liked their plan but could see many ways the whole plan would crumble. It did give her an idea though. She had been wiggling at a rusted bar on the window since they entered the room and it was almost free. She ducked her chin down to whisper her plan in Lily’s ear._

_“We’re going to get out of here,” she finished fiercely, squeezing the girl tight. “You and me, like always.”_

_The bar finally broke, just as the boys were moving into position at the door. She heard the sound of a key in the lock and nudged Lily to get to her feet. This was it._

_The door swung open and the first boy threw himself at the slaver’s feet. Emma smiled at the lock of shock on his face as he came crashing down. That was all she let herself see as Lily was already giving her a boost up to the window. Her fingers dug into the rich dirt outside but she slid back, unable to find purchase._

_She gathered her strength, felt Lily wavering beneath her weight and reached further than before. Her hand curled around the exposed root of a tree and she griped it like iron. One heave from Lily and she managed to scramble through the window, tearing her clothes and her skin on the broken bar as she did._

_Her heart was beating like a war drum as she scrambled to turn and pull Lily up after her. Their hands clasped each other’s forearms in a solid grip and she tugged, digging her knees into the soft earth. But Lily did not budge._

_The girl’s eyes went wide and Emma realised the first man had regained his footing and grabbed her around the middle. Beyond him the boys were shackled once more, head hanging and blood dripping from their lips. She looked back at Lily and felt her heart slump._

_“Don’t leave me, Emma,” she begged._

_Emma stared into the eyes she had known since before she could remember. She felt as though she were ripping her heart out as she let go, dragged her skin out from between Lily’s grasping fingers and saw utter betrayal come to cloud the girl’s face._

_“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Turned her back and ran. The words became her mantra and by the time Graham found her bleeding and ragged in the woods, she was wild with hatred for herself._

\--

Regina woke on her stomach, groaning at the stiffness of her back. The pain was bearable but the thought of having to stand up and walk had her eyes shooting open in distress.

“Hey there,” Emma had knelt down in front of her, head ducked low so that they could see each other easily. She smiled gently but her eyes were clouded with worry. “Welcome back.”

“You -” Regina stopped to clear her throat, the muscles struggling to remember how they usually worked. “You have to go.” She swallowed against the fear storming in her gut. “You have to hurry.”

Emma was already aggressively shaking her head. “No,” she said gruffly, reaching out to place a hand on a safe portion of Regina’s shoulder. “Not without you.”

Their eyes met each other stubbornly. Regina gritted her jaw and pressed her hands against the ground, pushing her body up as far as she could before Emma hurried forward to help her. With a few twists and much effort on both their parts, she finally came to be sitting. Her face was blanched and her breathing thready.

“I don’t think I can walk.”

Emma stood up in a flurry of movement and Regina watched her through darkening eyes as she paced backwards and forwards with her hands on her hips. On one pass, Regina caught her hand and she looked down at her, brow furrowed and lip bit with indecision.

“Leave me, Emma.” She squeezed her hand. “You have to save Henry.”

Emma closed her fingers around the hand in hers and held tight. She dropped to her knees, face sorrowful for a moment. If she left now, she would still make it in time. They had lost precious moments waiting for Regina to regain consciousness after the shock of the acidic rain from the dragons.

The crystals poking out of what remained of the back of her dress had already grown longer and wider than the ones on her palm. The largest was the size of one of Emma’s knuckles and the green sap from before had congealed around the base of each crystal. The skin of her back was a sickly angry red.

_I should leave her here and save myself, save Henry,_ Emma tried to recall her lone-wolf ways but the thought of going on alone rankled in her gut. She wasn’t alone anymore.

“No.” She stated decisively, squeezing Regina’s hand once more before letting it slide from her grasp. “I promised you we would find him safe and if there’s one thing I hate more than breaking a promise,” She quirked her lips at the woman and rose to her feet. “It’s leaving someone behind. So you’re coming with me. I’m going to make it happen.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, dear,” she did, she truly did. The foolhardy words had warmed her heart. Most everything this woman had done for her made her feel...protected. It was a feeling she had not been familiar with for decades. “But how? I can’t make it that far.”

Emma beamed down at her and dropped down into a crouch. “I’m going to carry you.”

Ignoring Regina’s scoff of disbelief, she snaked one arm under her knees, grateful that the woman automatically shifted to accommodate her. Her other arm found a position across the wounded back that would not rub against too many of the crystals. Regina hissed in pain at the pressure and Emma winced in sympathy.

She shifted her centre of gravity to allow for the woman’s weight and took a deep breath. Then she heaved upwards with a grunt.

Her arms strained, her thighs tensed and her back muscles popped. For a moment Regina thought she would make it, that this strange, determined woman would lift her into the sky as if she were a weightless child. She was three inches off the ground when the cry fell from Emma’s lips and she felt herself drop. The new crystals jerked against the arm slung around them and Regina’s vision went suddenly white.

“No,” Emma gasped, self-hatred tasting sour in her mouth. “No, no, _no._ ”

She let Regina go, her limp form sliding down to rest against her legs. She had failed another job. But this wasn’t some delivery job that could be excused, this one involved people’s lives. Involved her son’s life and the life of his mother.

_My son_ . She hung her head. _He’s alive and grown._ Her eyes flickered open and she could not help but study the serene face of the unconscious woman. Ethereal fairy beauty painted across every feature.

And she would die here if Emma failed this task.

A powerful grating sound met her ears and her head shot up to look at the sky. The broken red land would reach them soon. Her nostrils flared and she focussed back on Regina, her arms returning to their places at her knees and back.

“Okay, Swan,” she encouraged herself. “This is the world of Gods where magic users can’t use magic.” She tightened her hold on the limp woman, shifting back onto her heels. “Who’s to say someone without magic won’t be able to use it instead.”

With her eyes shut and her eyebrows drawn close together, she looked inside of herself for the spark which sometimes told her when to run, or duck beneath a blow. It was small, a warm point at the center of her heart. She focussed on it, breathing steadily. The scars on her hands began to itch.

Her forehead smoothed and a ghost of a smile crossed her lips. She tightened her stomach muscles, gritted her teeth and her eyes opened. Her arms strained as she heaved Regina upwards again and she had to shift her feet against the earth to keep her balance.

Her legs straightened of their own accord and she looked down.

_Well, what do you know._

Regina was smaller than she had thought, her body fitting comfortably against Emma’s torso where she held her tight. She looked almost peaceful.

Emma looked down upon the First Tree and stepped forward. She would take the last steps of their journey for both of them.

\--

They had been beneath the canopy of the First Tree for long minutes. Emma had almost given up on being surprised by this world. The branches formed a honeycombed roof, letting light in but ultimately shielding them from the outside world.

The walk with Regina in her arms had been almost too easy. Emma had barely broken a sweat and she was beginning to like the idea of being able to use magic. _If it even was magic_ , she gave a mental shrug. _Who knows with this place._

The trunk of the tree was in sight now and she could make out the forms of three people at it’s base.

A few minutes later, one of them rose to meet her.

Nimue had shed the cloak her avatar had worn, now wrapped in a long sleeved dress cinched under the bodice. Her eyes were edgy and her attempt at a smile looked more like a grimace.

She stood back until Emma had placed Regina on the ground by the gnarled roots of the tree. She brushed dark hair out of her eyes and glanced over the crystal wounds on her back. They were still growing, mangling the skin until it was unrecognisable.

Emma frowned at the still unconscious woman then shook her head. She sprung back to her feet and spun to find Henry.

_Gods, Henry._

The little boy was curled up in a sleepy ball, one hand resting beside his face as if he had only partially grown out of wanting to suck his thumb. His chest rose in increments, each breath puffing his cropped dark hair away from his face. It was more like Regina’s than hers, or even his father’s. But his cheeks and his jawline, when he lost his childhood roundness, they would be _hers._

She ran a thumb over the curve of one of his cheeks and felt tears well in her eyes for all of the years they lost because she had not tried to find him. Because Regina had taken him from her. She sighed, barely sparing a glance at the body of Regina’s Mother, ramrod straight and much too close to Henry’s for her liking.

Then she faced Nimue.

“I was worried you would not complete the journey, Emma.”

“Do I even want to ask how you know my name?”

Nimue pointed behind her at a waist height stone well, almost lost among roots which had risen to curl out of the earth. “It is how I’ve seen everything while trapped in this world.”

“How did you get stuck here?”

“The war that was waged here, it poisoned the air, made the very stuff we breath begin to harm us like it would the fairy folk.” She gestured to Regina. “But I was preparing an antidote. When the world began to destroy itself and our people chose to flee, I was left behind.”

“And the world? Why is it still being destroyed, I thought all of this happened centuries ago?”

“The fairy tithe.” Emma shuddered at the memory of the cruel ritual. “The blood of an innocent human, spilled by the Huntsman once every seven-year, was enough to keep the destruction stalled at the edges of the world. But the Harvest Queen,” she scowled at Regina’s form, now twisted into something so very far from regal. “Failed to have the ritual performed. Twice.”

Suddenly remembering how close the dangerous red horizon had come, Emma decided not to waste any more time with unnecessary questions.

“You said we could escape?”

The woman’s face twisted into a deranged smile and Emma swallowed against her fear.

“You, Emma Swan, are not the foundling you believe yourself to be.”

Emma cringed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Your grandfather, was once a resident of this land and he carved the door through which our people made their escape.”

Her mouth fell open into a gape and she blanched. _No,_ she shook her head insistently. “That can’t be true.”

Nimue threw back her head and laughed, a surprisingly cruel sound from such a beautiful woman. “Oh the stories I could tell,” her eyes flashed at Emma and she backed towards the trunk of the tree. “But we have only minutes, draw your sword.”

In a stunned trance, Emma followed the order and stepped up to see what Nimue was trying to show her. The bark of the tree was pitted a whorled but it had been covered in a design carved deep into the surface of the wood.

A design of leaves and arcane symbols, threaded through intricate knots. It was the same design as the altar she had been tied to in the Darkwood. The fingers of her free hand reached out and when she touched it she pulled back. The tree was warm. She narrowed her eyes in fascination and ran the pads of her fingers over the furrows which had been gouged out.

She glanced down at the wooden ring still on her finger. Although it had been many years since the bark had been carved, she could still identify the same rough burrs which marked both the ring and Henry’s wooden ball. The same chisel had carved all three.

Her eyes lifted to stare at Nimue in wonder.

“Is it true? Do you know who my family is?”

“If you carve a new handle for the door, you will find out. Only a child of Geppetto, with his blood and his power can reopen the portal.”

Emma turned back to the tree, subconsciously raising her sword. She bit her lip and ran her fingers down the blade to steady it as she pressed its sharp point against the bark.

Then she forced the tip into the wood. Immediately her blood began to sing with what must surely be magic. That warm centre of her heart began to pulse with each scrape and before long she began to _see_ the magic.

The golden glow starts at the back of her hands, where her thief's scars stand out against the skin. It flows down to the tips of her fingers, painting the sword in a bright light, before finally coming to curl around the marks she is making in the tree. It eddies against the old carvings and ripples back to her fingers in a tingling wave.

“Hurry,” Nimue urged her on and Emma, so focussed on her task, finally heard that the grating sound of the breaking sky could now be heard through the canopy of the tree. She looked down at Regina for a moment, the woman still not stirring. Her worry for the woman pushed her forward with greater purpose, and she nicked her fingers with the blade, the lopsided circle of her carving three-quarters to closed.

Nimue flicked her wrist and Henry and Cora’s sleeping forms floated up off the ground and over to them. In the distance a portion of the tree’s branches came crashing down. Emma pressed on, the magic in her veins thrumming like a drug.

Two more nicks into the wood and she was knocked to the ground as a wave of new magic thrust out from the tree.

She felt weak and drained. With bloodied fingers, Emma wearily returned her blunted sword to its sheath. When she looked up, a plaited archway in the old design had lit up to blaze with copper-brown light. Streams of the magic crept towards the ring she had carved until it was covered and bulging under the power. She watched with wide eyes as it reshaped itself into a knotted doorknob.

“ _Finally_ ,” Nimue hissed, already reaching for it, a fierce madness glinting in her eyes. Another part of the canopy came crashing down, much too close for comfort.

She turned the knob and with a tremendous groan, the door swung open. A swirling silver vortex lay beyond it and Emma was reminded of the window Cora had stolen Henry through.

Nimue made a gesture with her hand to call the floating bodies towards her and she took one of their hands in each of hers. She stepped towards the tree.

“Wait!” Emma cried, ducking her head as more of the canopy fell to the ground.

Nimue turned back, tilting her head in question. Emma looked back down at Regina and took up her hand.

“Help me with her.”

Nimue shook her head. “I only have two hands.” She gave a fake smile. “I have a blood oath with Cora, you’ll simply have to make your own way.”

Emma clutched the limp hand in hers. She did not trust what was left of her strength to hold the woman through another portal.

This could not be how their journey would end. She had made it to the tree with Regina, they had made it to Henry. They would make it home together. She felt her anger boil as Nimue took a step forward.

“ _Stop.”_

Gold light shot out from her hands and surrounded Nimue’s feet. The woman froze. She turned back to Emma in a fury.

“How did you do that?”

“You owe me a favour.” Emma stated carefully, trying not to let her focus waver from the magic trapping Nimue in place. “You will take us with you.”

Nimue gritted her teeth in an inhuman snarl. The tree was breaking and crashing down around them.

“Whatever it is you have planned, we don’t have all day.”

_A plan,_ Emma thought hurriedly. _I need a plan._

She looked back down at Regina, their left hands clasped together. Around Emma’s wrist was the strip of leather she always wore. The tie which had held together the changeling babe of sticks Regina had left in place of Henry.

In ten years, it had never shown wear, she had never been able to cut it with any tool. It was the only thing she could think of.

Faster than she believed she could move, she untied the thong. One end she wrapped around her wrist again, tying it as tightly as she knew how. The other end she tied to Regina.

With a great effort she heaved the two of them to standing and dragged the woman’s limp body towards Nimue, heedless of the crystals pressing hard into her own flesh.

She wrapped her free arm around Nimue’s middle and released her magic with a gasp.

They stepped forward together and into the portal.

 

**\--**

 

_And I asked myself_

_was this farewell_

_or a similar sign_

_of the end_

 

_For the earth is sinking_

_behind the horizon_

_it will not rise again_

_~ Günter Kunert, Before the Flood_

 

**\--**

 

The group crashed to the ground.

Emma recognised the familiar smells of the forest but was left reeling after the uncomfortable journey. Through groggy eyes she watched as Nimue released the hands of Henry and Cora and they floated gently back to the ground.

The woman turned to her and Emma shuddered at the contorted smirk on her face.

“Thank you, Emma.” Her voice sounded harsher here, unnatural. “I won’t forget what you have done for me.”

She flicked her wrist and disappeared in a cloud of dark green smoke.

Then the world was quiet.

Emma looked around them. They had landed next to the altar, in the middle of the fairy town. Yet the space which had been filled with dancing crowds when they departed, was now deserted.

She stood up on wobbly legs then looked down at her wrist in shock. The leather had finally severed. One length was still tied tightly around her, wedged in rivulets of broken skin from where it had pulled away.

The other length had similarly dug itself into Regina’s wrist. Emma sighed in relief when she saw her. The trip through the portal had evidently been enough to push the woman to wakefulness.

A groan from her right drew her attention to Henry and she rushed over to him.

“Mom?” He asked groggily as she fell to her knees at his side. She nodded rapidly and bit back her tears.

“She’s here, Henry,” she smiled at the boy. “We’re all back and we’re safe.”

“Emma?” He rubbed his eyes and she helped him sit up, looking over her shoulder to show him where his mother was. “What happened, she wanted a knife and then I -”

“ _Henry_ ,” Regina had finally opened her eyes and she looked upon her son with wonder. On her feet in a moment, she rushed over to them, falling to her knees. Her eyes jumped about, checking him for injuries but her hand only reached halfway to touching his arm. “You’re alive, you’re safe.” Her body sagged and her gaze fell to her knees. “I wasn’t sure -”

“Well don’t you three look just like the perfect little family.”

Regina froze.

Emma watched her from the corner of her eyes as she shakily rose to standing. The crystals protruding from her back glinted in the pale light of the moon as she turned to face Cora.

“I did not expect to see you again, _mother.”_ She spat the word with all the venom of a snake. Cora inclined her head.

“Nor did I expect to see you again, after you sent me beyond The Veil to certain death.” She looked down as her hand brushed her black and silver robes, the same ones she had worn the night Regina banished her. “As you can see though, not all of the legends about that world are true.” She eyed the crystals jutting out of her daughter’s ruined dress.

Emma and Henry looked apprehensively between the two women, trying to fill the gaps in what they were saying to understand the situation they now found themselves in.

“How did you survive?” She couldn’t help but ask how she had been thwarted that night.  

“Nimue gave me the antidote to her poison in exchange for allegiance.” Regina frowned.

“ _Her_ poison?”

Cora pursed her lips in a shadow of a smile. “Yes, my child. You and your,” she glanced over at Emma and eyed her up and down with distaste. “ _Protegee,_ are much too quick to trust. It was Nimue, in her search for power, who began the war which destroyed our world.”

“Our world,” Regina let the words run through her head, her face opening when illumination struck. “You are one of the veli folk?”

“Yes,” she narrowed her eyes. “As are you, Regina.”

“No…”

“Nimue twisted the air which so easily killed humans and fairies to infect us as well.”

“Is this another trick of yours to get me to rule with you?” The words almost sounded bored. “You never told me any of this before,”

“Because I did not remember. Our exodus came with a hidden price. We lost our memories of that world.” She shot a withering look towards the altar. “And the tithe we so diligently upheld made certain that they would remain lost.”

Cora turned back to her daughter and graced her with a true smile. She stepped forward only to stop when Regina took a step away from her.

“You may have been a disappointment in everything else but I have you to thank for allowing our memories to return. Nimue could not have devised our plan to escape otherwise.”

Emma stood up, understanding growing. She stepped around Henry and faced Cora.

“You kidnapped Henry because he was _my_ son, not hers.”

Cora’s eyes brightened and she clasped her hands together in a clap. “Such a surprise, the pet can think for itself.” Emma scowled but took another step forward so that she was just behind Regina. Her hand clutched at her sword.

“You needed him to carve the handle and open the portal.” Regina frowned back at her, she had missed this part of their journey. Emma nodded, remembering Nimue’s words. “The boy without a blade, you needed my sword, that’s the only reason we escaped that place.”

“Yes,” she confirmed easily. “Nimue watched everything through her well. She knew I would have enough power to create a window when a full moon rose on a Winter Solstice. And she knew who the both of you were from the day your parents sent you away.”

“What?” Emma asked warily, eyes peering up through a curtain of her hair. “What do you know of my parents?”

The smile which curled across Cora’s lips was a crooked sneer. The woman looked pointedly at her daughter, who had the nerve to hang her head. She laughed.

“Oh, Regina,” she tutted with sour sweetness. “Does this mean you haven't told her?”

“Told me _what?_ ” Emma looked between the two women, begging for an answer.

Cora looked back at her with pity. She seemed to take great pleasure in the moment.

“Regina is the reason you are an orphan, sweet Emma.”

The hand at her sword went as slack as her jaw. She turned to fully face Regina, the woman’s head still hung low. A hesitant step forward and Emma reached her hand out to touch her arm but pulled it back to her side before contact could be made.

Regina looked up and the shame on her face should have been enough of an answer for Emma but she needed to hear the words.

“Regina?” She asked it quietly, watching her closely as if they were the only two people alive.

“Yes,” she whispered. Her face crumpled at the look of betrayal which crossed Emma’s face. “I was young and your mother caused me great hurt.” Emma pulled away from her when she tried to move forwards. “Your parents sent you away to protect you from the same -” she hung her head again, eyes shining with the promise of tears. “From the same fate as Henry. You were to be mine.”

_I almost was anyway._ Emma didn’t voice the thought out loud. She turned her back on Regina and stepped over to Henry, holding a hand out to pull him to his feet. “We’re leaving,” she told him and he peered around her to stare at Regina. He looked so young. “Do you want to stay with her?” She asked quietly.

Henry looked between them, undecided.

“Are you going to let her take your son?” Cora demanded of Regina. She turned her head to look back at her mother.

“Better they leave by choice and be free of your rotten schemes.” She turned her body to face her mother head on, anger rising. “You have insisted on taking _everything I ever loved_ ,” she said in a fury, her hands curling into tight balls which began to glow with a purple light. Cora’s eyes flashed. “When will it be enough for you?”

The exclamation came with a yell and a forceful pulse of magic which shot at Cora. The woman waved a hand and easily redirected the attack towards the altar.

“Foolish child, you should know better than to challenge me under a moonlit sky.” Cora called a ball of silver light into being and threw it at her daughter with a flick of her wrist. Regina barely managed to repel it with a barrier of her own purple magic. The shield flickered, the light dimming and she stood there panting.

Emma pressed her lips together tightly. Her instinct was to step in and join the fight. To defend Regina - but now she wondered if her feelings towards the woman could be trusted. Every step of her life had been a battle and all of it was because of _her._

And yet. She was proud of the life she had made for herself. The associates who were close enough to be called friends, hell, she was even proud of her mistakes. The result of one was standing with her now, in all his fine clothes. Raised well by the fairies in her absence. Her eyes fell on the broken piece of leather still wrapped around her wrist.

With a sigh, she pushed Henry back behind her. She nodded at one of the fairy dwellings to tell him to hide there. He hesitated a moment then turned on his heel.

She had already chosen to protect Regina. There was no going back on that now.

“I’ve been learning new tricks, daughter,” Cora drew signs in the air, writing runes in the light of her magic. “You cannot hope to defeat me.”

Emma drew her sword and inched closer. Just in time to realise she was too late.

Between her hands, Cora had summoned a great ball of flame. With a single word in that strange language of magic, she hurled it towards Regina.

The woman threw up her shield but it flickered when the ball hit it. Then it died.

The shrieking scream which tore from her throat echoed in the night air. Emma shuddered at the sickening sound. She could do nothing but watch in shock as the fire shot around the woman’s body. In the blink of an eye the torrent had engulfed her, hissing and crackling from her hair to the ground below.

The flames devoured Regina whole. Took mere moments to burn her entire body to ash.

Emma’s sword dropped and she let out her own cry. But there was nothing left of Regina, nothing but the flames which had begun to lick at the trees around them.

“Mom?” Emma’s head slumped in defeat. Henry had watched his mother burn. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him run to the pile of ash and drop to his knees.

“Always the disappointment,” Cora tutted then turned to Emma. “She cursed your mother because of me.” She was careful of how she lay her blows. “I killed her lover, you see,” she glanced at the pile of ash, frowning wistfully. “I always hoped she would join me when I rose up to rule over the humans.”

Emma felt a cold fury well up in her. It was not Regina then, who had caused her a life’s worth of hardship, loneliness and pain. She felt a wave of grief that she had believed the simple truth. It was Cora who was at fault. And now she had made Henry watch his mother die. _He didn’t deserve this._

“What did they do for you to treat them like this?”

Emma tried to reach back inside herself, find that warm place in her heart where the magic had come from earlier. With her sword raised, she stalked forward, ready to be done with this story one way or another.

Cora laughed at her. “That sounds rather like you’re saying, ‘it’s not fair’.” She gave a casual wave of a hand. Emma was sent flying backwards through the air to crash land on her back. Somehow her sword had landed beside her. She crawled to her knees and took up the weapon again. Her body moved slowly as she stood up, every muscle protesting this will of hers to fight. She stubbornly raised her sword once more.

“If life were fair, you would have died years ago.”

With another careless flick of Cora’s fingers, the sword spun out of her hand and off into the trees. Emma shivered with fear as a new ball of fire materialised in Cora’s hand.

“As entertaining as the two of you have made my return,” she drawled, tossing the fire between her hands. “I think I’ve had enough.”

Her face took on an ugly gleam as her hand reared back to strike the final blow. Emma’s eyes widened. Cora’s hand shattered, bursting outwards, causing the flame to sputter and die. Her palm had been pierced by the twisting tendril of a branch, embedded throughout with crystal shards.

“You’re right, mother, you have had enough.” Another such branch wrapped around the woman’s throat. Emma was stunned at the sight of Regina alive and well, unharmed as if this fight had never happened.

“How?” Cora choked out as the branch squeezed tighter.

“Don’t you know, mother,” Regina once more looked and sounded like the regal fairy Queen she was and Emma felt her heart glow. “After a fire...” Another crystal embedded branch shot through the woman’s chest and she was dead before she could hear the final growled words. “The forest regrows.”

The branches withdrew from Cora’s limp body and it slumped to the ground as Emma stared at Regina in wonder.

“You’re alive.”

Regina sent her a hesitant smile. “You too.”

“Mom, Emma,” Henry called for their attention. “The woods -”

The women finally took note of their surroundings only to find that the Darkwood was on fire.

Regina looked back at Emma, her jaw set in a now familiar determination.

“Take my arm,” her eyes sparked as she looked over at Emma.

“We need to _run,_ Regina,” the words ground out from deep in her throat, frantic and wild now that she had seen the extent of the fire. Her eyes darted as she looked for an escape route. “The entire forest is catching on fire.”

Regina turned calmly to look at her, breathing much too slow and steady for someone who had just died. The same smile from earlier was back on her face - the one which made her look happy and young. Emma frowned at the expression.

“Trust me,” the fierce words whispered between them as if she knew they would be followed. Despite all that had just happened, Emma knew instantly that was exactly what she would do.

When Regina offered her arm, Emma took it up without complaint and gulped down her fear. She curled her fingers around the arm, just above the elbow. She could already feel the heat licking at her skin, a true fire was quickly growing, carrying as much power with it as all the magic she had seen tonight. Her eyes locked with Regina’s.  

“If you let a forest fire kill us after all of that, I’m going to be really upset.” The only response the woman gave was to shift closer towards her.

“Henry!” She turned to where he still stood, by the place where her ashes had lain, watching the building flames in horror. He glanced up at them in shock, not reacting when she reached her free arm out to call for him. “Henry, _please._ ”

“Henry,” Emma joined in, stepping so that she was pressed against her side, her free arm stretched out to mirror Regina’s. “Come here, kid.”

His trance broke and he ran to them, crashing into their bodies with enough force to make them sway. He reached out to take Regina’s hand but she shook her head, offering her arm instead.

“Not my hand, I’ll be needing that.”

He gripped her arm and in an instant a wave of magic burst out from Regina to battle the flames. Where she found the energy, Emma could not guess.

For minutes, wave after wave of power burst out from her, pushing back the flames. But still the fire raged on.

“It’s not working,” the despair was as clear in her voice as in her eyes when she looked at Emma. “I thought I could –” her eyes dropped to Henry’s head, nestled so tight between the human shield of their bodies. He fit there so well. _Maybe he is our chance._ “Henry, do you remember your lessons?”

His eyes were small and frightened but his jaw grit tight with purpose. He didn’t bother nodding, just opened the hand which had been wound tight around Emma’s and focussed on the power inside of him like his mother had taught him.

A stringy orange light sputtered into life a heartbeat later, flowing out from between his fingers to join the fading purple of Regina’s magic. The purple flared for a moment before the light of both colours began to dim.

Emma tried to find the magic inside of her to help but that well had long ago been drained dry.

_It’s not going to work_ , she realised. They will die here. Wrapped up in each other’s arms like the family Cora mockingly named them.

Emma thought she might cry if there was any moisture left in her body. The flames were picking up again now that the barrier was weakening and like a premonition, she could see it all turning to ash. Not just the Darkwood, but the remnants of a time before, where things like Gods and spirits danced to keep the world turning.

Most of all – and then she turned and found Regina’s eyes for perhaps the last time – this _almost_. This possibility of belonging, of finally finding a place to stay that was more than a momentary safe harbour. Which she had all but lost hope of finding until a strange boy followed a ball of string to her in the night.

Here, among these ancient trees which would soon be nothing but char, she took a breath and rediscovered hope.

Her free hand - the hand not encircling this beautiful despairing woman and the son they could have maybe found a way to share - curled into a tight fist. She felt the tightening of muscles all the way up her arm but she had nothing to hit. Her eyes had not left Regina’s.

“I’m sorry.”

Emma thought she was talking about taking Henry all those years ago so she pressed a kiss to the top of his head, eyes still locked on Regina, who shook her head. “For everything.” She clarified, voice almost as fierce as the fire around them.

Emma felt a sudden wave of calm pass over her like cold water on a hot day. She blinked once and when her eyes opened again, it was with a smile.

She did not expect to feel peaceful in her death.

Her hand opened and she shifted her body impossibly closer to these two people she wished she could have shown love to. With both of her arms wrapped around them, she leant towards Regina and, mesmerised, the woman mimicked her.

With the colour of magic dying around them and the heat of the flames licking at their skin, Emma inhaled Regina’s breath.

“I’m not sorry.”

Their lips met softly above Henry’s head. Emma felt a shockwave go through her. It started at that place in her heart where she had found her magic and shot to her hands where it played in her scars for a moment. Then Regina moved her lips and the world exploded with light.

\-- 

The fire had gone out in an instant and the three of them had been left to sort through the aftermath.

Regina was fascinated by the black marks around their wrists where the remains of the leather strap had been tied. She rubbed at the lines with a thumb but they seemed to have sunk below the skin, a result of the magic which had come from their kiss.

Emma could barely look at Regina as they walked through the remains of the village, searching for other fairies. They had been about to die and kissing the woman felt like the right thing to do after surviving so much together.

It had felt like waking up. Felt like the answer to all of the questions she had been searching for. And it scared her more than anything she had known. But when the Queen took her hand, Emma felt the flutterings of the remains of their combined magic sparking along the new scars which painted her wrist.  Her furrowed brow smoothed at the sensation and she laced their fingers together as Henry ran on ahead, checking every building he came to.

The Darkwood was deserted.

“Where could everyone have gone so quickly?” Emma asked without expecting an answer.

“I’m not so sure they left recently,” Regina squinted at the sky then turned to study the nearest tree. “Things have changed, I fear we may have been gone for years.”

“Years?” Emma exclaimed, dropping Regina’s hand in shock. “But how -?”

“After everything that happened beyond The Veil, are you really surprised?”

Emma’s shoulders slumped. “I guess not.” She glanced down at the wooden ring encircling her finger and her hand slammed against her forehead. “That means I’m a couple of years late on this delivery job.”

Regina furrowed her brow. “Why worry now?” She shivered in the night air and Emma swung her cloak around the woman’s shoulders. It sat awkwardly against the jagged rows of crystals still growing there.

“It was the job that brought me here after all,” she smiled slyly, eyes darting to Henry who had come back to listen. “I should at least finish it to thank the guy. So do you think apple tree survived the fire?”

The tree was close, a few minutes walk away, sitting by the edge of a stream. It’s branches were intact and stretching high and wide, many of them full of fruit. Henry scampered up the trunk, placing his feet without looking thanks to years of practice. He glanced at Emma over his shoulder as he swung between two branches and she felt Regina tense beside her.

“This tree was always my favourite,” he smiled at them and pulled himself into the curve of two branches where he could sit comfortably.

Emma just smiled back and slid the ring off her finger. She stepped up to the base of the tree and drew her sword.

“What are you doing?” Regina asked cautiously, not ready to see the weapon again so soon.

“I have no idea.”

Emma twisted the tip of her sword into the dirt to form a small hole. Then she brought the blade to her hand and grimaced. Its once-keen edge had been dulled considerably when she carved into the First Tree. She found the sharpest part and dragged it across her palm. Her blood welled up and she dipped the ring into it, coating the wood.

She knelt down on one knee to place the ring in the earth and covered it back over. With her uninjured hand she reached into a pocket and drew out the piece of parchment which was miraculously still hidden there. The words written on it were not in her native tongue but now that she had heard some of the language she felt more confident in speaking it.

_“Aithnich Vivaine.”_

Regina and Henry’s heads both snapped around to stare at her in shock. She shrugged sheepishly.

“What? Did I just curse us all to the underworld or something?” Regina’s eyes were wide open with awe.

Emma opened her mouth to ask what she had done when the great roots of the tree began to shift. She jumped backwards, her uninjured hand curling around Regina’s wrist, thumb stroking against the black marks there.

The earth rumbled and Henry flung himself from the tree, slowing his fall by grabbing at familiar branches on his way down. He scurried over to them and hid between their bodies, head poking out to watch as the roots parted and a tall woman slowly emerged.

She had wide hips and soft silver hair which was almost as white as the thin dress which hung from her shoulders. Her eyes, when she turned to them, were of the brightest blue. Regina sunk to her knees at the sight and Emma could do nothing but stare.

“Hello, granddaughter,” her voice was the rushing of water and the whistling of birds. “Thank you for returning my wedding band.” She raised her hand before her eyes and smiled softly. “Your grandfather was always one for making grand gestures.” The woman turned to Regina. “Please rise, Harvest Queen, you are family to me as well now.”

Regina did as she was told, her eyes still wide. “Are you who I believe you to be?”

“Yes, little one. I am The Mother of humans.” Emma gaped, her hand clutching tighter at Regina. “And the three of you have a lot of work ahead.”

“How so?” Regina queried, covering Emma’s stunned silence.

“You have unwittingly released a great evil upon this land.”

Emma glanced over her companions, protective worry settling into her still weary bones. She would do whatever it took to keep them safe.

“Nimue is not one to underestimate and she will have been making her plans for centuries. You will have to fix this mistake of yours, sooner rather than later." She slowly looked between each of them. "Find the child of three bloodlines and bring him to me. I will raise his blade from the lake and he will be our savior.”

“We will.” Regina spoke for all of them, Emma still shocked at the thought this _being_ was her ancestor. "We will find the child." The woman nodded. She turned with a sweep of her dress, the light fabric catching in a breeze and walked towards the water.

“Wait,” Emma finally broke her silence. The woman turned back to smile at her, then continued without a word. When she reached the edge of the stream, she continued walking until she had waded to its middle. Then she sunk beneath the surface and did not arise.

They stood in stunned silence for long minutes.

Henry broke it with a bubbling laugh. “Did you hear her? We’re going to go on an adventure together! She even gave us a prophesy.”

Emma sighed, she would have time to think about the concept of an orphan having Gods for ancestors later.

“Your mother and I have had more than enough adventure trying to find you,” she said pointedly. Her bones ached and she was sure she could sleep for the next week if nobody woke her. She didn't want to think about anything that had happened either. “Think there any beds left in this little village of yours?”

Regina scoffed. “Little village. I am the Harvest Queen, do you think I sleep in a tree?” Emma shrugged and shot a wink at Henry.

“What do I know, I’m just a stupid human, right?”

“Well,” Regina stared thoughtfully out over the water. “Now I’m fairly certain neither of you are entirely human.”

“Does that mean I can eat the apples now?” Henry asked slyly, reaching for one on his tip-toes.

“Don’t you dare touch even one of those things,” she shot back, taking Emma’s fingers between her own once more and tugging her away from the tree, hopeful that Henry would follow without complaint. “Let’s just go home and lie down for a year or two.”

Emma squeezed her fingers. “Is there room for three where you’re heading?” Regina looked up at her carefully. Emma shrugged, she had no idea where they stood with each other now. “I can go on to the village if there’s not.”

Regina smiled softly and pressed up to place a quick kiss against her cheek.

“Yes, Emma Swan,” she slung an arm around the woman’s waist and held on tightly. “I think there will always be a place for you here if you should want it.”

 

\--

 

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued...


End file.
